Hizbullah fought fierce battles with Israeli troops on the Lebanese border yesterday as thousands more foreigners fled the nine-day-old war in Lebanon, including 1,000 Americans evacuated by US marines.
Al-Jazeera television said four Israelis had been killed, but later Israeli media gave the number of deaths as six, with eight wounded. Hizbullah said one of its fighters was killed.
The fire-fight took place just inside Lebanon, near an area where Hizbullah guerrillas killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded nine in Lebanon on Wednesday.
Earlier yesterday, three Israeli soldiers were wounded, two of them seriously, in clashes in the area. The Israeli army said two Hizbullah fighters were killed in that battle.
Hizbullah said it had destroyed two Israeli tanks in house-to-house fighting in the village of Maroun al-Ras.
Last night Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the two Israeli soldiers seized last week would not be released without a prisoner swap through indirect negotiations.
"If the entire universe came [ to pressure Hizbullah] it would not bring back the Israeli soldiers unless through indirect negotiations and a prisoner swap," he said in excerpts of an interview with al-Jazeera television.
The group's al-Manar television channel showed captured Israeli equipment, including a rifle, night-vision binoculars, grenades and a video camera.
Elite Israeli troops have launched small raids inside Lebanon in recent days to try to destroy Hizbullah positions and stop guerrillas firing rockets into the Jewish state.
Israel, which is also waging a three-week military campaign in Gaza, launched its offensive after Hizbullah captured two soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12th.
Its bombardment has killed at least 311 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands.
At least 29 Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed.
The United States, which has exerted no public pressure on Israel for a ceasefire, said US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice may travel to the Middle East next week to press for a political solution to reduce fighting.
UN secretary general Kofi Annan called for an immediate end to hostilities, but said a team he had sent to the region believed a sustainable ceasefire would take time to arrange.
There was no sign Israel or Hizbullah was ready to heed the Beirut government's pleas for an immediate halt to the fighting, despite UN, French and Russian backing for a ceasefire.
Israel's defence minister Amir Peretz raised the possibility of a ground offensive into Lebanon, something senior generals have also repeatedly said they do not rule out.
The border clashes have shown the guerrilla group is still moving relatively freely near the hilly frontier, despite a week of heavy artillery barrages from the Jewish state.
Israel told Germany it would welcome any help Berlin could give in trying to free the two soldiers held by Hizbullah, but it also reiterated its rejection of Hizbullah's proposal for a prisoner swap similar to one mediated by Germany in 2004.
Meanwhile, about 40 US marines arrived on a beach in a Christian area north of Beirut at dawn to ferry about 1,200 Americans to Cyprus as part of efforts to extract US citizens caught in a war zone like thousands of other foreigners, many of Lebanese origin.
Israel, which has imposed a sea and air blockade of Lebanon and bombed the main road to neighbouring Syria, said it would let aid into Lebanon to ease the growing threat of a humanitarian crisis.
It was not clear how the aid could reach worst-hit areas in the south where roads and bridges have all been targeted.
Israel's offensive in Lebanon has coincided with a major push into the Gaza Strip.
Troops killed 15 Palestinians during raids in the Gaza Strip and West Bank on Wednesday. Israel's offensive, launched on June 28th, has killed about 110 Palestinians, half of them militants.