Israel has launched fresh air attacks on suspected Hezbollah guerrilla targets in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army said its planes had struck "terrorist targets" in the Majdel Silim area, just outside Israel's self-declared security zone.

The attacks are the latest phase in a round of tit-for-tat violence between the two sides over the last few days.

They came after a Hezbollah rocket attack killed an Israeli soldier in south Lebanon on Tuesday - the sixth such fatality in the last fortnight.

Prior to Wednesday's raids, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy warned "the soil of Lebanon will burn" if Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets into northern Israel to retaliate for bombing raids on southern Lebanon.

"Let everyone hear: vital interests of Lebanon will go up in flames and it will take many years to restore them," he warned.

But the remark was shrugged of by Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss who said the threat was part of Israel's "terrorism" against his country.

"In making these threats, he reminds us of the genocide mentality that characterised Nazism in Hitler's time," Mr Hoss said.

He added that as the guerrillas were responding to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, "we say that the solution, simply, would be to terminate the Israeli occupation".

Hezbollah, which has vowed to continue its operations against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, appears to have refrained from further rocket attacks on Wednesday.

But Mr Levy appealed to Syria, the main power-broker in Lebanon, to rein in the guerillas.

"I appeal to Syria not to put the fate of peace in the hands of those who declare their intentions of torpedoing the peace," he said. "I appeal to Syria to prove its intentions of peace."

Diplomatic pressure

France, Syria and the United States are seeking an urgent meeting of a monitoring group set up four years ago to try to avoid civilian casualties in Lebanon.

US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, has also urged Syria to use its influence to persuade Hezbollah to end its attacks.

Placing the blame firmly on Hezbollah for starting the trouble, Mrs Albright said she had talked several times to Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa to ask him to use his influence on the guerrillas.

"What the Israelis have done is to send a very strong signal about the fact that they don't want this escalating," she said.

US President Bill Clinton also appealed for an end to the violence and is sending his Middle East envoy Dennis Ross back to the region next week.

In Damascus, an official quoted the Syrian foreign minister as saying Israel was trying to kill a peace process that was already stalled by the "obstinacy" of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

But a Syrian official said he had agreed on the need to hold a meeting of the monitoring group within 48 hours.



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Lebanese police said Israeli jets had carried out four raids on Hezbollah strongholds early on Wednesday morning.

Israeli fighter-bombers made two sorties on the hills around Zaoutar, a village on the edge of the central sector of the Israeli-occupied zone.

Israeli planes also fired four air-to-ground missiles at the hills of Jabal Dahr, on the border of the western sector of the zone, the police said, with Israeli artillery targeting the southern sector of the Bekaa valley.

Late on Tuesday night, Israeli Apache helicopter gunships fired three missiles at the top floor of an 11-storey building in Tyre, 25km (15 miles) north of the Israeli border.

At least two people were wounded and taken to hospital.

Some security sources said the apartment hit was being used as a communications centre for Hezbollah, but an official for the group denied any links to the building.

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