Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz vowed yesterday that Israel would attack all sources of fire in its offensive against Hezbollah, regardless of location, alluding to attacks on built-up areas.
"All those who attacked Haifa and positions behind our lines will pay a very heavy price," Peretz told a news conference in the northern city where eight civilians were killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack yesterday.
We have given orders that "every source of identified fire will be struck no matter where it is," Peretz added.
Hezbollah "thought that by firing rockets from areas where families are living, we would not react," he said, before vowing Israel would "strike them wherever they are."
Israeli fighter jets have pounded Lebanon for five straight days, killing at least six people yesterday in an ever-widening assault that has left the country almost completely cut off from the outside world.
At least 18 people, half of them children, were burnt to death on Saturday when jets fired missiles on a convoy of villagers fleeing the assault.
Nevertheless Peretz stressed that Israel has no plans to reoccupy Lebanon.
"We do not want to reoccupy Lebanon, we have other means of operating," he told reporters in Haifa.
"We do not want to get bogged down in the Lebanese quagmire," he said.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah rockets killed eight people in the Israeli city of Haifa yesterday and bombs shook Beirut.
It was Hezbollah's deadliest rocket strike on Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it would have "far-reaching" consequences for Lebanon.
Hezbollah said the attack was retaliation for Israel's killing of civilians and destruction of Lebanese infrastructure.
Medics said 20 people were also wounded in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, which was hit by about 20 rockets, including one that struck a railway station causing most of the casualties. Blood was smeared on smashed train compartments.
Israel's campaign in Lebanon, launched after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight on Wednesday, has killed 112 people, all but four of them civilians.
It has drawn only a mild plea for restraint from the US, which blames Hezbollah and its allies, Syria and Iran.
Lebanon said Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi had relayed Israeli conditions for a ceasefire.
"Prodi told me that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert informed him of two demands for a ceasefire -- handing over the two captive Israeli soldiers and a Hezbollah pullback to behind the Litani river," a government statement quoted Prime Minister Fouad Siniora as telling the Cabinet.
The river is about 20km north of the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Bombs crashed into Beirut's Shiite southern suburbs in raids which set fire to Hezbollah's al-Manar TV complex and nearby buildings, witnesses said. The station's signal disappeared briefly several times before returning.
The US earlier blocked any move by the UN Security Council to demand a ceasefire, saying the focus for diplomacy should be the G8 summit in St Petersburg.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she had told Olmert her country was deeply concerned about civilian casualties in Lebanon and hoped Israel would exercise restraint.
But she said a ceasefire demanded by Siniora would not work unless it addressed the cause of the problem, which Washington says is Hezbollah violence supported by Syria and Iran.
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