Rice has rejected international calls for an immediate ceasefire. (Reuters)

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The United States has given Israel the thumbs-up to pursue its offensive on Lebanon for at least another week, senior Israeli officials told Haaretz daily on Sunday, July 23.

The one-week extension is aimed at giving Israeli ground troops operating in southern Lebanon to make some gains before American intervention, Al-Jazeera reported, quoting Israeli experts.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is due in Tel Aviv Sunday, will explore ways with Israel's leadership to end the conflict and begin to shape a new order in Lebanon, according to Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

She will return next Sunday to try to implement a cease-fire, they added.

According to the Israeli officials Rice's trip aims to formulate an agreement to end the fighting and send a strong international force to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1559, demanding the disarming of all militias in Lebanon and the deployment of Lebanese army along the Israeli border.

Rice on Friday, July 21, rejected international calls for an immediate ceasefire, saying the world is witnessing "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" in the current fighting between Israel and Hizbullah.

Experts said that Rice might have been hinting at a wider regional war that re-shapes the Middle East.

In his weekly radio address, US President George W. Bush said last week that Rice would make it clear during her visit that "resolving the crisis demands confronting the terrorist group that launched the attacks and the nations that support it," in reference to Syria and Iran.

The New York Times revealed Saturday, July 21, that the Bush administration was rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel to help it in its fight against Hizbullah.

More Civilians Killed

Women inspect what once were their homes in south Beirut. (Reuters)

Israeli warplanes bombed Sunday east Beirut and south Lebanon, killing at least five civilians, taking to more than 360 the number of Lebanese killed since the start of the 11-day-old assault, mostly civilians.

Half a dozen blasts echoed across the Lebanese capital as jets roared over the southern suburbs in the early hours of the day, Reuters reported.

Air strikes destroyed a mosque in the southern port city of Sidon, wounding four people.

A dozen Israeli air strikes in the eastern Bekaa Valley destroyed three factories, a house and several bridges, wounding seven.

Some 500,000 Lebanese have fled the war-battered south. Others are trapped by fighting, especially in southern border villages.

An Israeli general said Sunday his soldiers took control of Maroun Al-Ras, a hilltop strategic border village, a report confirmed by the spokesman for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, Milos Strugar.

"Israeli troops and tanks are now inside Marun Al-Ras," Strugar told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The UNIFIL has monitored the volatile Israeli-Lebanese border for the past 28 years.

Hizbullah, which has been battling Israeli ground troops for days, launched more rocket attacks Saturday night on Haifa, killing two people and wounding 14.

Israeli officials estimate that between one third to a half of all residents in Haifa, Israel's third biggest city, fled to escape Hizbullah rockets, Haaretz said.

The Israeli army said more than 1,100 rockets have hit northern Israel so far, killing 15 Israeli civilians. Twenty Israeli soldiers were also killed in clashes with the Lebanese resistance group.

Blocking Aid

"It makes it a violation of humanitarian law. It's bigger, it's more extensive than I even could imagine," said Egeland. (Reuters)

Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, censured Israel Sunday for not providing safe access to urgently needed aid to the Lebanese people and appealed for an immediate $100 million to help avert a humanitarian crisis.

"So far Israel is not giving us access," Egeland told reporters as he toured shattered southern Beirut.

"There is definitely a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Lebanon," averred the UN official.

Egeland said the UN was planning to deliver aid using a fleet of trucks and by ship into Beirut and the southern city of Tyre.

"We're particularly worried for this area of Beirut and for the southern part of the country.

He continued: "There are wounded who do not get sufficient treatment. There are people who do not have safe drinking water. There are, first and foremost, tens of thousands of people who are now being besieged, or in areas (of) cross fire."

The UN official expressed conviction that the Israeli military tactics would not bring in a solution to the crisis.

"It is costing too many lives and it will not lead to a solution in the south. There is no military solution to these things, it is only a political solution. The enormous bombardment that we have seen here with one block after another being leveled has to stop," he stressed.

Surveying a pile of rubble, Egeland also accused Israel of breaching the international humanitarian law.

"It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses. It makes it a violation of humanitarian law. It's bigger, it's more extensive than I even could imagine."