Complete coverage: Israel and Lebanon

A force to protect Abbas

The sun had not risen, but the soldiers of the Palestinian Presidential Guard were already flush from morning training, their green fatigues dark with sweat and covered in dust.

Power-sharing deal eyed

Hamas leaders are willing to soften their hard-line stance toward Israel and enter into a national unity government within weeks to restore economic aid to the Palestinian territories, a senior Hamas figure said yesterday.

Hezbollah cracked the code

Hezbollah guerrillas were able to hack into Israeli radio communications during last month's battles in south Lebanon, an intelligence breakthrough that helped them thwart Israeli tank assaults, according to Hezbollah and Lebanese officials.

REPORT FROM LEBANON

Turning rubble into rhetoric

Hezbollah has a message for everyone entering this south Beirut neighborhood: The devastation all around was "Made in USA."

Annan pushing diplomacy

On his first visit to the Middle East since war broke out last month, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded yesterday that Hezbollah turn over two Israeli soldiers it abducted to the Lebanese government, and he urged Israel to lift its blockade of Lebanon.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

Remorse over abductions

In his first public expression of regret over the abduction of two Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah said yesterday that he would not have ordered the troops' capture if he had known it would lead to a full-scale war with Israel.

A rescue gone awry

Dressed in Lebanese army uniforms and ready with several Arabic speakers, an Israeli commando team that landed near the city of Baalbek was apparently trying to rescue two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah last month, according to a senior Lebanese security official.

A threat against militants

Lebanon's defense minister warned yesterday that anyone who violates a week-old truce by firing rockets at Israel will be tried for treason before a military tribunal.

They hail Hezbollah as heroic

Behind the counter at Salaam Taxi, Mohamad Charaky has glued posters of a man from another country on each side of his picture of the late Palestinian legend, Yasser Arafat.

Plotter swayed by extremist

Matiur Rahman, the Pakistani widely suspected of helping to plan a mass bombing of trans-Atlantic airliners this summer, began his transformation from schoolboy to accused terrorist by listening to speeches by a mesmerizing sectarian preacher, his father says.

REPORT FROM LEBANON

Threatening the peace

The nearly week-old cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah was seriously tested for the first time yesterday, when Israeli commandos carried out a raid deep inside Lebanese territory and fought with Hezbollah guerrillas for an hour.

REPORTING FROM ISRAEL

A road to peace through Syria?

On the day after a cease-fire with Hezbollah, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz turned to Syria, another longtime enemy, and held out the prospect of negotiating for peace.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

Disarming Hezbollah left unclear

The Lebanese government yesterday ordered 15,000 troops to move into the country's south to take control as Israeli forces withdraw after 34 days of fighting with Hezbollah.

As fighting fades, political spats heat up

No sooner had the fighting quieted down in Lebanon this week than the sniping began on Israel's political home front. Much of it had little to do with the war.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

Finding heartache amid the rubble

Someone found a few bottles of cologne. The rescue workers - not that there was anyone they could rescue alive - threw some on the ground, poured some on the trapped bodies and sprayed each other's face masks.

An uneasy quiet greets Mideast truce

The afternoon was quiet except for the breeze. For the first time in a month, family and friends gathered outside yesterday on this kibbutz within view of the Lebanese mountains without fear of a rocket attack.

Defiance among Hezbollah

The Israelis had gone, and within hours, Hezbollah was back in control.

MIDEAST CRISIS

Dead expatriate's sister grieves in L.A.

The body was among the furniture on the floor of the living room. It was Mohammed Hamoudi and he was an American citizen.

REPORTING FROM ISRAEL

Waiting for war's end

The machinery of war is supposed to fall silent in southern Lebanon this morning after 33 days of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, but serious questions remain that threaten the chances even for temporary peace.

REPORT FROM LEBANON

Fierce fighting in the final hours

It was the last full day of war - or so the politicians were saying - and it had left Ahmed Skafi with a sliced-up body and a dead friend.

REPORT FROM LEBANON

Talk of peace, but cease-fire unclear

When is a cease-fire not really a cease-fire?

A friendly rivalry 3,000 years ago

The kings of Tyre and Israel once battled it out in riddles, not bombs.

Israel wants peace, victory

Under international pressure to make peace with Lebanon and domestic pressure to defeat Hezbollah, Israel moved in both directions yesterday.

Israeli assault failed to defeat Hezbollah

The peace deal for Lebanon endorsed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Friday is likely to have serious ramifications for his leadership.

Israeli troops on edge as they await outcome

With the war between Israel and Hezbollah poised to head in one of two directions - toward cease-fire or massive escalation - soldiers in the Galilee Panhandle took a break Friday from fighting in Lebanon. They prepared equipment in the hot sun and awaited word on whether they would return to combat, or to wives and children.

REPORTING FROM ISRAEL

Israeli town living underground

The other families who lived in Dov Sinai's bomb shelter left this town a mile from Lebanon a few days ago. Since then, he has been alone with the noise of Hezbollah rockets landing on the streets above him.

REPORT FROM LEBANON

A pact for peace?

The United States and France have agreed on the framework of a new United Nations resolution to end a month of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, according to sources in the Lebanese prime minister's office.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

Hezbollah's arsenal inflicting heavy toll

Most of the Israeli military casualties in south Lebanon - including a majority of the 15 killed yesterday - have been caused by Hezbollah's powerful arsenal of anti-tank missiles, according to a senior Lebanese security official.

Israel's worst yet

The day began well for Maj. Lior Tayler, an operations commander for the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon. It ended as his army's worst yet in the war against Hezbollah.

Peril on the streets

All but the crazy or the desperate are staying inside now or perhaps walking gingerly under awnings at the side of the road and in the narrow alleys of Tyre's old city. Yesterday and the night before, Israel delivered the message that any moving vehicle was now a target.

REPORTING FROM ISRAEL

War touches raw nerve for grieving parents

When Hezbollah's rockets rained on this northern Israeli resort city last month, one landed near the serene hillside memorial to Adi Avitan, a soldier abducted and killed by the Lebanese militia nearly six years ago.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

Hospitals facing up to their worst fear

A dozen infants lie in incubators, with humming machines and gentle violet lights overhead. In some rooms, a nurse sits next to each premature baby, meticulously recording vital signs.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

Amid the explosions, town's people depart

The staff at the Jabal Amel hospital mingled yesterday outside the emergency room, as they do all day at the moment, waiting for arrivals.

Ignoring Hezbollah: a costly error

The war that has torn apart southern Lebanon, forced the evacuation of northern Israel and inflamed the Middle East could scarcely have been imagined two months ago, even in a country used to fighting its neighbors.

Israel's deadliest day

In the deadliest day for Israel in four weeks of war, a storm of Hezbollah rockets yesterday killed 12 Israeli army reserve soldiers resting outside a cemetery parking lot here and at least three civilians in a dense residential section of Haifa, the country's third-largest city.

Lebanon raps UN bid

Lebanese leaders condemned a draft United Nations resolution yesterday that aims to end fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, raising doubts about whether a cease-fire would hold.

Witnessing the horrors of war

First came two explosions. They rang through the main street leading south into this ancient city. They came out of nowhere, perhaps from one of the Israeli drones buzzing in the skies.

Historic seaside town targeted

Israeli commandos crept through orchards of banana and orange trees early yesterday before raiding an apartment where Hezbollah fighters were storing weapons.

Progress toward peace?

After 25 days of war, there is a first sign of a potential cease-fire: The United States and France agreed yesterday on a draft United Nations resolution to end fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

Strikes reach farther

Israel further isolated Lebanon's capital city Friday by destroying bridges on the main north-south highway - the last relatively safe main road out of Beirut to neighboring Syria. Hezbollah, meanwhile, launched its deepest rocket strike yet into Israel.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

A warning, talk of cease-fire

For the first time since war broke out three weeks ago, Hezbollah's leader threatened yesterday to strike at Tel Aviv if Israel attacks central Beirut.

Many rockets remain

Despite the intense Israeli bombardment of the past three weeks, Hezbollah still has several hundred medium-range rockets and a few dozen longer-range missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and other cities in central Israel, according to a senior Lebanese security official.

Border fire intensifies as UN seeks a halt

The heaviest fighting yet in the 3-week-old Israeli-Lebanon war took place on both sides of the border yesterday while diplomacy faltered.

Grim findings amid the rubble

One by one, the bodies were brought down from the mountain, piled so high at the city morgue in Tyre that it ran out of wood to build enough caskets.

In Lebanon, thousands flee

For three weeks, Salma Bassem hid in her rubble-filled home waiting for the sound of bombing to stop.

U.S. losing Mideast sway, experts say

As international pressure grew for an end to Middle East fighting, President George W. Bush kept up his full-throated support of Israel yesterday even as critics said it was damaging U.S. interests in the region.

Israel vows to keep fighting

Israel's apologetic but defiant reaction to yesterday's events in the Lebanese town of Qana underscores the difference between this war and most Arab-Israeli conflicts waged during the past three decades: In the minds of many Israelis, their country's very existence is now at stake.

Reverberations from years ago

In the Arab world, the word Qana means one thing: the scene of an Israeli attack 10 years ago that killed more than 100 civilians.

MIDEAST CRISIS: ATTACK ON QANA

Most of at least 56 dead are kids

One by one, Bilal Bilal and his Red Cross team pulled the victims through a gaping hole that led from the darkened basement into the sunlight.

'A thousand new bin Ladens'

On the eve of the U.S. presidential elections in 2004, Osama bin Laden finally explained why he attacked the World Trade Center.

REPORTING FROM ISRAEL

Threat of attack quiets Israeli vacation spot

To drive into northern Israel is to enter a land that becomes stranger and stranger with each passing mile.

Border town center of conflict

Israeli troops had besieged Bint Jbeil when Nabil and Souad Hammoud finally decided to leave the southern city Monday afternoon.

Going deeper into war

Hezbollah escalated its war of rockets against Israel Friday by firing the most powerful missile yet, at Afula, roughly 12 miles deeper into the Israeli heartland than anything deployed so far.

Sorrow without end for families

Two hours before Maj. Roi Klein's funeral yesterday evening, his best friend sat outside his house, gently shaking his head at what he believes was a split-second act of selflessness.

From exile, he's eager to fight

Six years ago, Fouad spent his days in southern Lebanon fighting the guerrillas of Hezbollah. Now, he spends his nights finding cover from their rockets in an underground bomb shelter in this northern Israeli town, a Lebanese Shia Muslim living in exile in Israel and wishing he were back fighting his old enemy face to face.

Heavy fighting exacts Israeli toll

Israel's attack on Lebanon turned costly for the Israeli army yesterday when Hezbollah guerrillas killed at least eight soldiers in fierce fighting in a town less than 3 miles inside Lebanon. At least 22 more soldiers were injured in what Israeli officers described as intense combat in the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

Hezbollah relishes the grinding street fights

When Israeli planes were bombarding southern Lebanon and the outskirts of Beirut last week, Hezbollah's leader lamented his group could do nothing to stop it.

Senate hopeful slams Israel's actions

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic foe Jonathan Tasini says that Israel - where he spent his teenage years - is violating international law and terrorizing civilians in Lebanon and Gaza.

Foreign force would face hard road

Deployment of a proposed international force for southern Lebanon, the linchpin of a U.S. plan for ending the war raging there, is likely to be very difficult to pull off, experts on the region say.

As history repeats, unwilling to be driven out

The scars on Shimon Biton's body, still hurting after 36 years, tell him to stay.

Different take on Israeli action

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday refused to condemn Hezbollah guerrillas for their role in the Israel-Lebanon crisis, prompting Sen. Charles Schumer and other local Democrats to declare a boycott of his address to Congress today.

REPORTING FROM LEBANON

No cease-fire deal

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Beirut yesterday but offered Lebanese leaders little hope of a quick cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

ANALYSIS: THE GROUND OPERATION

Lebanon expecting a full-scale invasion

From the moment Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers provoked a war, one question has dominated the debate: Will Israel invade Lebanon as it did in 1982?

ANALYSIS: THE MIDDLE EASTERN VIEW

Why these Arab regimes backed Israel

The war in Lebanon has provoked a Middle East realignment in which the most influential Arab regimes have essentially made common cause with Israel against radical Islamic groups.

MIDEAST CRISIS TROOPS ON THE GROUND

LI family uneasy, but daughters are OK

A bomb exploded nearby, the house started to shake and Maya Eid, of West Islip, heard the commotion over the telephone line as she spoke to her sister in Beirut.

Rice headed for summit

For the first time, the United States Friday embraced plans for a "robust" international force in southern Lebanon to deal with Hezbollah guerrillas at the heart of the Mideast crisis.

They weren’t supposed to die

Rabia Taluzi, 3, and his big brother Mahmoud, 7, were scrambling up a narrow street when a Katyusha rocket pierced through the clouds and killed them.

A view of devastation

The smell of dust and rubble wafts half a mile away. It is a mixture of pulverized concrete, electrical wiring and asbestos. It burns the eyes and throat.

Lebanon's leader lashes out at West

A week after Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers provoked a war that Lebanese leaders are powerless to stop, the government here has finally started to speak out.

A fast exit for these Yanks

When David Goldi Merhige arrived in Lebanon two weeks ago for his cousin Joseph's wedding, Beirut was a bustling seaside city with a cosmopolitan flair.

Anger, relief as Americans flee

The U.S. evacuation from Lebanon finally began in earnest yesterday, but anger mixed with relief for many of the first 1,000 Americans to leave, who questioned why it took a week to get them out.

Lebanese seek solace from bombings

In an abandoned parking garage on the outskirts of Beirut, about 4,000 people have taken refuge four stories underground. There's no sunlight, no fresh air, no cell phone signals.

ANALYSIS

Hezbollah didn't figure on reaction

Israel has a military and political opportunity to take advantage of "perfect storm" conditions in the Middle East to dismantle Hezbollah in Lebanon and rid the country of Iranian agents, some Middle East analysts here believe.

Americans flee Lebanon crisis

With Americans stuck in embattled Lebanon protesting that the United States is moving too slowly to get them out, the United States announced plans to begin a massive and potentially dangerous full-scale evacuation at dawn today.

Q&A: Understanding the hostilities in the Middle East

After seven days of Middle East fighting, is there a serious effort to find a diplomatic solution?

Terms for a cease-fire

Looking for a way to break the impasse over its air war with Lebanon, Israel offered tough conditions for a cease-fire that drew cautious support from the Bush administration.

Israeli 'odd couple' unites in battle

They make a decidedly odd couple, collectively calling the shots on their country's largest military operation in 20 years: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a career bureaucrat with a penchant for expensive suits, and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, best known for his anti-war politics.