Syria issued a stark warning Sunday that an Israeli invasion of Lebanon would drag it into the spiralling Middle East conflict and called for an immediate ceasefire.

“If Israel makes a land entry into Lebanon, they can get to within 20 kilometres of Damascus,” Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told the Spanish newspaper ABC.

“What will we do? Stand by with our arms folded? Absolutely not. Without any doubt Syria will intervene in the conflict.”
The minister criticised the United States saying that it was “unjustifiable” that “the superpower is not working for a rapid ceasefire.”
Israeli jets blitzed Lebanon Sunday and Hezbollah fired off more deadly rockets in a new bout of tit-for-tat attacks as the conflict continued to spiral despite international efforts for a ceasefire.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also heading to the Middle East with Washington increasingly estranged from European and Arab allies over a conflict that has killed close to 400 people and triggered a major humanitarian crisis.

At least 11 civilians, including a Lebanese press photographer, were killed in air strikes across southern and eastern Lebanon as Israel kept up its punishing war on Hezbollah following the seizure of a strategic border village by Israeli ground forces on Saturday.
The Shia fighter group said three of its fighters had also been killed.
In a wave of pre-dawn raids, fighter-bombers for the first time struck directly inside the main southern city of Sidon, where tens of thousands of Lebanese have sought refuge from the relentless Israeli offensive.

Israel also targeted Hezbollah’s power base in Beirut’s Shia southern suburbs and struck factories, roads and bridges in air strikes in the eastern Baalbek region.

Shia guerrillas responded with a new hail of rocket fire on Israel’s third city of Haifa, killing two people.

The deaths of 11 more people in Israeli attacks Sunday raised the total number of people killed in Lebanon since the start of the conflict to 361, according to police and medics.

The United States and Israel said Sunday that they were ready to support an international force led by NATO in south Lebanon to ease tensions.

No US troops are likely to be in the force, which according to a US media report could be between 10,000 and 20,000 strong and led by a contingent from France or Turkey.

John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday the US administration would take the idea of NATO leading a buffer force “seriously”.

In Jerusalem, Defence Minster Amir Peretz said Israel supported the deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon.

Rice said Friday she did not think US ground forces would take part.
Officials quoted by the Washington Post said the force could be 10,000-20,000 men and be led by a French or Turkish contingent.

Italy, Brazil, Pakistan, India and Germany have also been named as nations that could send military units.

President George W Bush and top US diplomat Condoleezza Rice were to meet Sunday with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister ahead of Rice’s departure to the Middle East for talks that aim to defuse the escalating crisis in Lebanon.

After the scheduled talks at the White House with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, Rice was due to depart Sunday for meetings in the Middle East with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.

The UN relief chief has condemned Israel for “violating humanitarian law” over its blistering raids on Lebanon.

UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland, in Beirut to launch a urgent appeal for funds for half a million people made homeless by the conflict, made no attempt to hide his fury as he toured bombed-out areas.

US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton rebuffed a previous Syrian offer of dialogue in characteristically blunt fashion, saying that “Syria doesn’t need dialogue to know what they need to do.”

US administration officials admonished Syria Sunday to stop supporting Hezbollah while rebuffing an offer by Damascus for direct talks on the Lebanon crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a cabinet meeting Sunday that the current Lebanon crisis would last a long time.

Israel’s ambassdor to the United States said on Sunday that a military offensive against Hezbollah had damaged the group’s arsenal and killed a large numbers of its fighters.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that progress has been made towards persuading Israel to open safe corridors in Lebanon and to allow an international force to deploy in the war-torn country.

The latest crisis in the Middle East conflict is the “peak of absurdity”, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis said Sunday making another appeal for an immediate ceasefire in the region.

Tonnes of humanitarian aid material were stuck in Syria with no safe route to reach people driven from their homes by Israeli bomb attacks on Lebanon, the United Nations refugee agency said on Sunday.

PHOTO CAPTION

A medic grabs the hand of Selaiman Chidiac, who was killed, from the wreckage of the building of mobile and television masts that was targeted by Israeli air strikes in Fatka, north Lebanon July 22, 2006. (REUTERS)

AFP & Agencies