Israel will resume full air strikes against targets in Lebanon early tomorrow after a 48-hour partial suspension of aerial activity has passed, Justice Minister Haim Ramon said today.
Mr Ramon said the Israeli air force planned to resume full operations from 1am tomorrow (10pm Irish time).
Mr Ramon said Israel was making real progress against Hizbullah, which he said was at "breaking point," and that an expanded ground offensive should bring victory.
"With a little patience and a lot of determination . . . we shall win this campaign," he said.
Israeli warplanes tonight attacked at least five suspected Hizbullah positions near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, three hours before the official end of a two-day pause in the air war. Witnesses said fighter jets and helicopters were still above Baalbek. There was no information immediately available on what was hit or if there were casualties. The ancient city of Baalbek, a major Hizbullah stronghold, has been repeatedly pounded by Israeli fighter jets since the fighting began 21 days ago.
Earlier an Israeli ground offensive pushed into southern Lebanon and pounded towns and villages in two other areas to push Hizbullah fighters back from the frontier despite growing calls for a ceasefire.
Three weeks after the conflict erupted - when Hizbullah snatched two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid - Israel said its army needed up to two more weeks to finish its offensive.
Israeli soldiers from a combat engineer unit walk along a road crossing back from the Lebanese side of the border near the northern Israel town of Metulla
A "limited" force of Israeli troops crossed into Lebanon near the village of Houla, just south of the Kafr Kila area, where there was fighting and intensive shelling, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force said.
Artillery shells also rained down on the border area around Aita al-Shaab, where Hizbullah said it was fighting fiercely with Israeli ground troops and had destroyed a tank.
The Israeli army said 20 Hizbullah fighters were killed in south Lebanon in the last 48 hours. Al Arabiya television said three Israeli soldiers died in the latest clashes.
Mr Ramon claimed about 400 of an estimated 2,000 Hizbullah fighters have been killed in three weeks of fighting; this figure was denied by Hizbullah.
The intense battles came the same day as Israel's security cabinet approved an expansion of its military operations in southern Lebanon. This would entail a ground sweep by the Israeli Defence Forces of around seven kilometres into Lebanon.
"I reckon the time required for the (army) to complete the job, and by that I mean that the area in which we want the international force to deploy is cleansed of Hizbullah, will take around ten days to two weeks," Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Army Radio.
Israel has rejected mounting international calls for a truce as world powers differ over the urgency of a ceasefire.
Most Arab and European governments, including Ireland, have insisted an immediate halt to the fighting but the United States has said any ceasefire must be part of a broader deal that ends the threat from Hizbullah.
The United Nations has postponed discussions on mobilising an international force for Lebanon until at least Thursday as it seeks progress toward a political solution.
Lebanese civilians survey the damage to the southern suburbs of Beirut, site of intense Israeli air raids
EU defence ministers are meeting in Brussels today to discuss their response to the the conflict.
Israeli aircraft launched strikes against Lebanese border villages and areas in eastern Lebanon on the second day of what it had said would be a 48-hour partial halt to aerial bombardment.
The raids were aimed at "preventing the transferring of weaponry" to Hizbullah, said an army spokesman. Israel had said it would still use air strikes against Hizbullah forces and to back its ground forces.
The spokesman for the 2,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said Hizbullah had fired some rockets and mortars at Israel over the past 24 hours but that the salvos were "significantly fewer in numbers than previous days".
Syria, which backs Hizbullah, has pledged not to end support for resistance to Israel.
At least 605 people have been killed in Lebanon, although the health minister puts the toll at 750 including bodies still buried under rubble. Fifty-one Israelis have also been killed.
The southern village of Qana is to bury bodies of at least 54 Lebanese civilians, including 37 children today, two days after they were killed in an Israeli air strike.
Despite international condemnation of the Qana attack and the US Secretary of States Condoleezza Rice's view that a ceasefire could be reached this week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there was no sign fighting would end soon.
The Israeli army was calling up at least 15,000 more reservists to support the ground operations, Israel Radio said.