Israel launches ferocious assault on Lebanon after capture of troops

Israeli forces launched their most serious military assault on southern Lebanon in six years yesterday by land, sea and air after Hizbollah militants seized two soldiers in a cross-border raid described as an "act of war" by the Israeli Prime Minister. Seven Israeli soldiers were killed in the raid, and the response.

The capture of the two soldiers and the killing of three in the same guerrilla operation embroiled Israel in a second front two weeks after its forces mounted an incursion into Gaza in response to the abduction of a 19-year-old army corporal. The army later reported heavy fighting over the Lebanese border.

More than 150 miles to the south, Gaza suffered one of its worst days since the incursions began with medics reporting at least 24 Palestinians dead. These included seven children from the same family killed when a quarter-ton bomb was dropped on their home in an attempt to assassinate the Hamas militia leader Mohammed Deif. Israel signified its intent to continue to fight on two fronts by destroying the Palestinian foreign ministry in Gaza City in an air strike at 1.30am this morning.

Four Israeli soldiers were killed when a tank was blown up by Hizbollah guerrillas as it crossed the border into Lebanon. The eighth soldier was killed as soldiers tried to reach the tank.

Ehud Olmert, who is facing his most difficult test since winning the Israeli general election in March, said its operations would be "restrained but very, very painful". Meanwhile, the Israeli army reported sporadic Katyusha fire into northern Israel.

The Israel Defence Forces said its warplanes had hit 30 targets in Lebanon, including roads, bridges and Hizbollah positions in what it said had been strikes designed to restrict the movements of the soldiers' captors. At least two civilians were killed.

The Israeli army's chief of staff, Lt-Gen Dan Halutz, was reported by Israeli television as warning the Lebanese government that the military would target infrastructure and "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years", if the soldiers were not returned.

The Israeli cabinet last night authorised a "severe" response and issued a statement saying it held the Lebanese government responsible for the attacks and the safe return of the abducted soldiers. It said offered no specific details of the action it planned to take. The Arab League called for an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers.

The Israeli army said Hizbollah guerrillas fired a volley of Katyusha rockets before executing their raid on an Israeli military vehicle as it patrolled on the Israeli side of the border, north of Zarit. Seven hours earlier, in the most lethal single incident of the present military campaign in Gaza, an air strike destroyed the two-storey house in the Sheikh Radwan area of Gaza City. It killed a Hamas activist, his wife and his seven children, aged between four and 15.

The Israelis failed to kill the target of the attack, the Hamas militant leader long at the top on Israel's wanted list, Mohammed Deif. But as Hamas militants mounted a guard at the intensive care unit of Gaza City's Shifa hospital last night, unnamed Palestinian security officials reported that he might be paralysed.

Rescue workers pulled a four-year-old child out of the rubble. He had on a red T-shirt but his body was cut in two. Palestinian doctors said the owner of the house, Nabil Abu Salmiyeh, a lecturer at the Islamic University and a Hamas activist, had been killed along with his wife and seven of his nine children.

Rami Samour, 25, who lives near by, said the blast blew the mutilated body of a woman into a neighbouring house. A neighbour, Safwan Amamour, 39, said he and his wife were hit by flying rubble. He said: "No words can describe this destruction, this hellish damage, which I will remember of the rest of my life."

In separate attacks in central Gaza, Israeli troops killed at least nine Palestinians, including a policemen and at least two Islamic Jihad militants in a car. Troops had moved into the area in the early morning, in effect cutting north Gaza from the south.

In another attack, Israeli soldiers killed four gunmen planting explosives in a road used by the army to enter central Gaza. In a third incident, Palestinian security officials said an Israeli aircraft fired a missile into a police station in the central Gaza town of Khan Yunis, killing a policeman and wounding two others.

The outcome of the Lebanon engagement is seen as critical for Mr Olmert and his Defence Minister, the Labour leader, Amir Peretz. Both lack the military experience of their recent predecessors. Military failure would seriously weaken the government, triggering an increasingly influential role for other figures inside and outside the cabinet with more notable military and intelligence backgrounds.

The Hizbollah raid was also thought likely to strengthen the hand of those ministers preferring a military escalation over the pursuit of diplomatic efforts to secure the release of Cpl Gilad Shalit, still presumed to be alive in Gaza. Their argument will be that yesterday's raid vindicates Mr Olmert's stated argument that negotiations on prisoner releases will encourage more seizures of Israeli soldiers.

The Hizbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, told a reporters in Beirut that no military operation would return the captured soldiers and added: "The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and a trade."

Israel said it would not agree to a prisoner swap. "You don't negotiate with terror organisations," said Gideon Meir, at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Geir Pedersen, the senior UN official in Lebanon, met Lebanon's Prime Minister and said Hizbollah had crossed the border into northern Israel. He said: "Hizbollah's action escalates the already tense situation and is an act of very dangerous proportions."

The Lebanese Information Minister, Ghazi Aridi, said: "The government did not know, and does not bear responsibility nor embrace what happened."