SIDON, Lebanon, Aug 9, 2006 (AFP) - An Israeli strike on the southern Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al Hilweh killed at least two people and wounded 15, including five children, medics said early Wednesday.
It was the first time Israel has bombarded the Palestinian refugee camp, the largest in Lebanon and home to some 50,000 people, since the start of the four-week-old conflict.
Two shells fell on the area around the home of Colonel Munir Maqdah, a radical military chief of the Fatah movement in Lebanon, Palestinian sources said.
The victims were pulled out of a house destroyed by the strike in the north of the camp near Sidon, the main city of south Lebanon, and taken to three hospitals as rescue efforts continued to try to find any others trapped inside.
Lebanon houses 12 refugee camps which accommodate half of the 380,000 Palestinians living in the country and have now been opened to Lebanese fleeing the Israeli bombardment.
On Tuesday a deadly Israeli bombing raid struck a southern Lebanese village close to the funeral for those killed in an attack a day earlier as its army and Hezbollah fighters remained locked in bloody clashes inside the border.
At least six people were killed and 28 wounded in two raids on the village of Ghaziyeh, close to the city of Sidon, 500 metres (yards) away from the funeral procession of 14 people killed there a day earlier, police said.
Five other civilians were killed and four wounded when Israeli jets later fired missiles on a convoy of trucks carrying fruits in eastern Lebanon, near the border with Syria, police said.
Although there was a relative lull in bombardments around the region of the port city of Tyre, the Israeli air force carried out dozens of raids in 20 different locations across the border region.
Both Hezbollah and the Israeli army said there were violent clashes in Debel -- seven kilometres (four miles) inside Lebanon -- where Hezbollah said it had killed several soldiers and the military said one had been killed.
In several major incursions, Israel has poured thousands of soldiers into an area stretching from Bayada on the coast in the west to the village of Kfar Kila in the east, facing fierce Hezbollah resistance.
The army has advanced in places up to eight kilometres inside Lebanon in its ground offensive, aimed at eradicating Hezbollah fighters from the border area and thwarting rocket attacks.
An Israeli reservist was killed in clashes with Hezbollah forces in the village of Debel, an army spokesman said, adding that at least 15 Hezbollah men were killed in the fighting.
The spokesman said the dead soldier was among a force walking near an engineering corps vehicle that was hit by an anti-tank missile. Hezbollah said it had 'killed and wounded' several Israeli soldiers in Debel and the village of Labbouneh further west.
A second Israeli reservist was killed further west, the army said, without elaborating.
The fighting came after the Lebanese government said it was ready to deploy 15,000 of its troops to the south -- a Hezbollah stronghold that has been out of the control of the Beirut authorities -- when Israeli troops leave.
The Israeli military dropped leaflets on south Lebanon warning it would strike any vehicle travelling south of the Litani River, an area that includes the port of Tyre.
'Every vehicle, whatever its nature, which travels south of the Litani will be bombed on suspicion of transporting rockets and arms for the terrorists,' said the leaflets, addressed to the Lebanese people and signed by the 'State of Israel'.
Amid increasing alarm about the humanitarian situation, Tyre is cut off from the outside world after the Israeli army destroyed a bridge connecting the city to the north and warned residents living in the south not to travel by car.
Residents expressed fear that the ground war was closing in on the city itself, with the thuds of artillery fire from the front echoing at frequent intervals across the city.
Meanwhile, rescue workers were still frantically searching for people missing after Israeli air strikes on residential buildings in south Beirut that killed 31 people and wounded 75, hospital sources said.
The double strike on the Shiyah district -- which until now had been spared attacks and was still inhabited by some residents -- caused a three-storey building to collapse. A neighbouring building was sliced in two.
As efforts intensified to agree a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to hostilities, Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz warned that if diplomatic efforts failed to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks the army would expand its operations.
'I have instructed all the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) commanders to prepare for an operation aimed at taking over launching areas and reduce as much as possible Hezbollah's rocket launching capability,' he said.