At least 15 Israelis were killed and dozens wounded by Hezbollah rocket fire as Israel faced its bloodiest day on the homefront since launching its offensive in Lebanon.

Seventeen people in Lebanon, including 12 civilians, were killed by Israeli fire while world powers at the United Nations tried to persuade both sides to back a resolution aimed at ending 26-day-old conflict.

Twelve members of an Israeli reserve infantry unit who were camping near the town of Kfar Giladi close to the Lebanese border were killed in the single deadliest rocket attack since Israel launched its offensive in Lebanon on July 12.

At least three people were killed and more than 30 wounded in heavy rocket fire on Israel’s third largest city of Haifa, as rescuers battled to free survivors from the debris of a collapsed, burning building, police and emergency services said.

In Lebanon, Israeli warplanes again pounded Hezbollah’s stronghold in the suburbs of Beirut and bombed villages across south Lebanon.

Nine civilians, a Lebanese soldier and a Palestinian militant were killed, while three Chinese UN peacekeepers were wounded in cross-fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas.

The tit-for-tat attacks continued after the UN Security Council in New York began debating a French-US draft resolution to bring a halt to the war, starting with an “immediate cessation of hostilities” on both sides.

The draft was swiftly rejected by Lebanon because it did not call for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces, something which Israel says is possible only when a 15,000-strong international force is deployed to disarm Hezbollah.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told a radio interviewer that France took note of Lebanon’s objections, but said he had told Prime Minister Fuad Siniora in a telephone call that the resolution could work only if it were accepted by both warring parties.

The White House, meanwhile, said it hoped for a second UN resolution on an international force within days of the ceasefire resolution, which is expected to be put to a vote on Monday or Tuesday.

“We would like to have days, not weeks, for the second resolution which would authorize the force, and obviously as soon after that as the force can move the better,” US national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters after talks at President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also appeared to throw his weight behind the draft resolution, in a phone call to British Premier Tony Blair.

A Kremlin statement said Putin had “underlined the need for an immediate halt to the hostilities in Lebanon which have already claimed hundreds of victims and taken the region to the edge of a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Fifty-eight Israeli soldiers have been killed, mostly in combat, since the start of the offensive following the capture of two soldiers by Hezbollah in a deadly cross-border raid. At least 36 Israeli civilians have died in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

The Israeli military said it had captured a Hezbollah militant suspected of involvement in the July raid but there was no word on the fate of the captive soldiers whom the Shiite militant group insists must be exchanged for Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.

Hezbollah announced the deaths of three of its fighters in clashes with the Israeli army in south Lebanon, without specifying when they had died.

The new deaths brought to 51 the number of fighters whose deaths have been announced by Hezbollah since the start of the Israeli offensive.

An air-to-ground missile destroyed a house in Ansar, a village east of Sidon, killing six of its occupants and wounding five others, police said.

Three other civilians were killed and one more was wounded when a missile slammed into a house in the coastal town of Naqura — home to the headquarters of the UN force in south Lebanon.

Aircraft also bombarded four bases of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) killing one pro-Syrian militant and wounding four.

The air raids came one day after what Lebanese police said was the heaviest bombardment since the war began.

Almost 1,000 Lebanese have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians, and more than 3,000 wounded. An estimated 915,000 have been forced out of their homes.

Israel had dropped leaflets over the south on Saturday, warning it would bombard Hezbollah positions, especially in the main southern city of Sidon, which has been swelled by an influx of Lebanese trying to flee the conflict.

The plight of displaced people was another point which Siniora said should be addressed by the UN resolution.

Hezbollah’s backer Iran dismissed the draft as one-sided, saying that it insisted on the immediate release of Israeli prisoners while the fate of Lebanese prisoners was a subject for negotiation.

As for Hezbollah, one of its two ministers in the Lebanese government, Mohammed Fneish, said: “When the Israeli aggression ceases, very simply, we will stop (fighting) on condition that no Israeli soldier remains inside Lebanese land.”

Syria, which also supports the Shiite Muslim guerrillas, similarly rejected the draft and its Foreign Minister Walid Muallem warned of regional war if Syria came under attack.

But in Crawford, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appealed for swift passage of the resolution by the Security Council’s 15 members saying it was a “first step” to lasting peace.

Rice sought to ease Lebanese concerns about the lack of any reference to the need for an Israeli pullout.

“No one wants to see Israel permanently in Lebanon,” she told reporters after talks at Bush’s ranch.

“Nobody wants to do that,” Rice said. “The Israelis don’t want it, the Lebanese don’t want it, so I think there is a basis here for moving forward.”

But she admitted that the resolution was no quick fix for the conflict.

“We’re trying to deal with a problem that has been festering and brewing in Lebanon now for years and years and years, and so it’s not going to be solved by one resolution in the Security Council,” she said.

“I would hope that you would see very early on an end to the kind of large-scale violence, large-scale military operations.

“But I can’t say that you should rule out that there could be skirmishes of some kind for some time to come.”

France’s ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said there could be a full Security Council vote on Monday or Tuesday.

But Israeli Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog said “the army will continue to act” until the resolution enters into force.

And Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres warned it would take weeks not days for the resolution to take effect on the ground.

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