Times Online August 03, 2006 The remains of a collapsed building after an overnight Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs (Issam Kobeisy/Reuters) Israel resumes Beirut bombing By Times Online, Stephen Farrell in Jerusalem and Richard Beeston Video: Times Online TV Israeli warplanes resumed strikes against Beirut’s battered southern suburbs this morning after a six-day lull, as ground troops attempted to seize border hills from Hezbollah militants. The renewed strikes come as Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese Prime Minister, said that Israel’s offensive has killed more than 900 people and left 3,000 wounded. A third of the casualties in the conflict that has raged over the past three weeks were children under 12, he added. In a video message to a summit of leaders of the Muslim world, Mr Siniora also said a quarter of the population – one million people, had been displaced.  Fifty-six Israelis, including 37 soldiers, have been killed in the conflict. Muslim leaders, meeting in Malaysia today demanded that the UN implement immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. In New York, American, British and French diplomats said that they were close to agreement on the wording of a UN resolution that would call for an immediate halt to fighting and open the way for a second resolution authorising multinational force. But differences between France and the United States forced the United Nations to again postpone a planned meeting today of potential contributors to an international force. Ehud Olmert has set out his conditions to bring an end to the fighting in Lebanon calling for a robust force of 15,000 foreign combat troops, including British soldiers, to be deployed in the south of the country. In an interview with The Times in Jerusalem, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that the conflict could be over as soon as the United Nations Security Council authorised an international force and the troops were in place. Nevertheless, Mr Olmert seemed confident that the fighting could be stopped within days. "I do not think that it will take weeks," he said. "I think that a resolution will be made some time next week by the UN Security Council and then it depends on the rapidity of deployment of the international forces into the south of Lebanon." Mr Olmert insisted that the Jewish state would not stop fighting until a force arrived equipped and mandated to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559 — code for disarming Hezbollah — and he made clear that there would be an "overlap period" between Israeli pullout and multinational arrival. "I think it has to have about 15,000 soldiers. I think that’s more or less what the international community understands," he said. He also said that Israel would not welcome a unit similar to the existing UN Interim Force In Lebanon (Unifil), which he said had proved ineffective in halting Hezbollah’s seizure of southern Lebanon. "It has to be made up of armies, not of retirees, of real soldiers, not of pensioners who have come to spend leisurely months in south Lebanon but, rather, an army with combat units that is prepared to implement the UN resolution." He added: "We will not pull out and we will not stop shooting until there is an international force that will effectively control the area." Amid intense behind-the-scenes efforts to narrow the differences, UN ambassadors and governments expressed optimism that a UN accord was now within reach. The French ambassador, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, said: "We are working very well. We are getting closer, much closer." In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said: "I would say that our point of view and the French point of view are really converging, to the point now where we are working off a single text of a draft resolution." A draft of that resolution could be circulated in New York today. On the ground in southern Lebanon, an lsraeli missile killed a family of three this morning when it slammed into a house in Taibeh, a village close to the border. Clashes with Israeli troops were also reported in another border village, Aita al-Shaab where two Israeli tanks and two bulldozers were destroyed, killing and wounding their crews. Security officials said six missiles struck roads in the southern villages of Mlita and Ein Bouswar in the Iqlim al Tuffah province. Israeli troops also raided southern Gaza early today, killing at least seven Palestinians, including four militants and an 8-year-old boy. Twenty-six Palestinians were wounded in the air strikes, at least 10 of them militants, security and hospital officials said. An Israeli inquiry into Sunday’s bombing of Qana, where it was initially reported that 52 Lebanese civilians, most of them children, were killed, said the military had made a mistake. The army inquiry found that the military would not have attacked if they knew there were civilians in the building. "Israel did not know there were civilians in the building," the Israeli military said in a statement. "Had the information indicated that civilians were present…the attack would not have been carried out." Lebanese hospital officials this morning also revised down the number of people killed in the Israeli air raids to 28 dead. The initial estimate had been based on a register of more than 50 people who had sought shelter in the basement of a building that was struck. "Twenty-eight people are confirmed dead, including 16 children, and nine were wounded, " officials at the Tyre government hospital said. Hezbollah fired a record number of 213 rockets into Israel yesterday, with some penetrating the West Bank, the farthest that they have reached. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251-2297396,00.html