BEIRUT, Aug 1: Thousands of people fled Tyre as Israeli forces thrust into southern Lebanon on Tuesday in an expansion of their offensive, pounding towns and villages but meeting fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerillas. Three Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting.

Three weeks after the war erupted when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, Israel’s security cabinet agreed to step up its offensive, entailing a ground sweep six to seven kilometres into Lebanon.

Israel said it would resume full air strikes in Lebanon early on Wednesday at the end of a partial, 48-hour suspension.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he saw the start of a process that would lead to a ceasefire.

European Union foreign ministers called for an immediate end to hostilities, watering down demands for an immediate ceasefire at the insistence of Britain and Germany.

A joint statement adopted at a crisis meeting of the bloc said: “The Council calls for an immediate end to hostilities to be followed by a sustainable ceasefire.”

Israel’s army said it had warned residents north of Lebanon’s Litani river to leave the area. Three civilians were killed and three wounded in an air strike southeast of Sidon.

“We have so far now about six efforts running inside Lebanon ... brigade size or even bigger than brigade size efforts in each one of them,” Israeli Brigadier General Shuki Shahur said. An Israeli brigade is usually made up of 1,000 troops or more.

Over 600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Lebanon. The health minister put the toll at 750, including bodies buried under rubble. Fifty-one Israelis have been killed.

Qana mourned the deaths of at least 54 civilians, including 37 children, killed in an Israeli air strike on Sunday.

“All those killed had no shrapnel or wounds on their bodies. They all died of suffocation. The debris fell on them — their colour was blue,” said Red Cross volunteer Bassam Mokdad. “If I had been able to arrive earlier, I could’ve found people alive.”

Israeli artillery shells crashed down on the border area around the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab, where Hezbollah said it had destroyed a tank in battles with Israeli troops.

Al Arabiya television said three Israeli soldiers died there. Hezbollah said it had inflicted 35 casualties in house-to-house battles at Aita al-Shaab.

Israel’s justice minister claimed about 300 of an estimated 2,000 Hezbollah fighters had been killed so far, and the tourism minister later said 400 had been killed. Hezbollah has announced 43 deaths.

“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 Hezbollah, will take around 10 days to two weeks,” Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Army Radio.

Israeli aircraft bombed eastern Lebanon near Syria, Lebanese security sources and witnesses said. The raids were aimed at ‘preventing the transferring of Weaponry’ to Hezbollah, the army said.

The UN was forced to scrap two aid convoys planned for villages close to Lebanon’s southern border.—Reuters