BEIRUT, Aug 5: Israel told residents of Sidon on Saturday to evacuate south Lebanon’s biggest city ahead of air strikes on Hizbollah offices and rocket launching sites it said were located there.

The Israeli army announced its intentions as a senior US official was meeting Lebanese leaders on a possible deal to end Israel’s 25-day-old war with Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch said after meeting Prime Minister Fouad Siniora that the solution lay in a “lasting political framework backed by an international force”.

A Hizbollah rocket strike in the Galilee region of northern Israel killed three people in a house, Israeli television said. Five people were wounded by rockets north of Haifa.

An Israeli army spokesman said leaflets dropped on Sidon, whose normal population of 100,000 has been swollen by refugees from war zones further south, had warned all residents to leave.

“We dropped leaflets warning residents to leave because the army will attack Hizbollah rocket launching sites in Sidon,” he said. Another spokesman said “offices and general Hizbollah infrastructure” in Sidon would also be targeted.

A local official in Sidon, who asked not to be identified, said Hizbollah’s Shi’ite guerrillas were not present in the mainly Sunni Muslim city. One resident said he had seen a leaflet warning people to leave, but it did not mention Sidon by name.

Lebanon says a million people, a quarter of the population, have been displaced by the war launched after Hizbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Mr Welch, in Beirut to discuss a draft UN resolution that world powers hope will halt the fighting, said after talks with Siniora that Lebanon needed lasting peace. “We want to end and put behind us forever the terrible violence we have witnessed in the past three weeks,” he said in a statement to reporters.

“With a lasting political framework supported by an international force to help the Lebanese armed forces, I hope we can all work together to realise an agreement with the people of Lebanon for a better future,” he added. He answered no questions.

He earlier held talks with Nabih Berri, the Shia speaker of parliament who has acted as the main contact between the government and Hizbollah since the violence began.

Welch gave no details of his talks with Siniora and Berri.

Lebanese political sources said Berri insisted on the Beirut government’s seven-point plan, which starts with a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the south ahead of any deployment of the Lebanese army backed by UN peacekeepers.

Israel Radio said Mr Welch was expected in Israel on Sunday. —Reuters