Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah invited the Lebanese yesterday to attend a "victory" rally in the guerilla group's Beirut stronghold battered by Israel in a 34-day war as Israel ordered a probe into army's conduct in the war.

"I call on you all to participate in a victory rally, your victory ... next Friday afternoon in the southern suburb, the suburb of honour, glory, faith, steadfastness and victory for the whole country and the whole nation," he said in a message aired on Hizbollah's Al Manar Television.

"Let us renew our covenant and declare our joy at the divine victory to the whole world." It was not clear if Nasrallah himself would attend the rally amid fears of Israeli attack.

The charismatic cleric has not made a public appearance since a July 12 press conference to announce the capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid that sparked the war.

In a show of defiance, the rally will take place in the southern suburb of Beirut, a Shi'ite Muslim Hizbollah stronghold which was among the areas most devastated by Israeli strikes.

Nasrallah said the rally would be held in honour of Lebanese who were killed in the war and Lebanese detainees who remain in Israeli jails.

But in Israel, hard-hit by hundreds of projectiles fired by Hizbollah, it is plain to see that one month on, town of Kiryat Shmona is still licking its wounds.

The Israeli cabinet voted yesterday to set up a beefed-up government inquiry into the conduct of the Lebanon war after widespread public pressure to investigate the offensive that failed to achieve its main objectives.

The cabinet voted 20 to 2 to establish a five-member government commission into the war, chaired by a retired judge and also comprising two university professors and two retired generals.

The probe - established more than a month after a UN-brokered ceasefire ended the month-long offensive against Hizbollah on August 14 - will examine how the government and defence establishments dealt with the threat from the Shi'ite militant group both before and during the war.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the government commission will have the same powers as a state commission - Israel's most powerful type of public inquiry for which many government critics here had been calling for weeks.

"The government intends to give this commission powers identical to that of a state investigative commission," Olmert said at the start of the cabinet meeting.

PHOTO CAPTION

A cluster bomb is seen in the yard of a house in the southern Lebanese village of Sultaniyeh. (AFP)