UN Security Council has revealed its impotence in its response to Israel's conflict with Hizbollah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said as Israel vowed to carry out its battle against Hizbollah.

As Lebanon mourned for the 52 victims of an Israeli bombardment on the southern village of Qana, Zionist jets pounded Lebanon's Masnaa border crossing with Syria, wounding four customs employees and a civilian.

The battle between Hizbollah and Israel raged along the bordering villages with the fighters claiming to have attacked Israeli warship. The Israelis denied it.

Hizbollah's military wing, the Islamic Resistance, claimed in a statement that its guerillas had "destroyed a Zionist warship ... off Tyre."

"This is the begining of the vengeance for the children of Qana."

And a Syrian-made bomb was detonated next to an Israeli army patrol road in the occupied Golan Heights, causing no casualties but stirring concern the Lebanon conflict could widen, Israeli television said.

Israeli military sources said the overnight blast in the Golan, which the Jewish state captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war, was believed to be an act of solidarity with Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.

The UN Security Council met in New York yesterday and unanimously adopted a statement deploring the Qana attack. But the US blocked adoption of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call for an immediate truce.

Mubarak said: "Egypt expresses its regret and annoyance at the failure to reach an immediate ceasefire... The Security Council has failed to deal rapidly and effectively with the Israeli aggression and to fulfil its responsibility for international peace and security."

"This foot-dragging and impotence reflect the fundamental flaws in the joint defence system which the United Nations represents," the Egyptian president added.

Mubarak yesterday sent Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit to Saudi Arabia to discuss the crisis.

Israel rejected mounting international pressure to end its war against Hizbollah and launched a new incursion into Lebanon.

A UN official said a meeting scheduled on a new peacekeeping force for Lebanon had been delayed "until there is more political clarity" on the path ahead in the 20-day-old war.

Civilians fled battered villages in southern Lebanon after Israel agreed partially to halt air strikes for 48 hours, and aid convoys headed into the area to deliver supplies.

Rescue workers found 28 bodies buried for days in destroyed buildings in three south Lebanon villages, the Red Cross said.

Israeli jets bombarded targets in the south Lebanon hills despite the announced halt in air raids, and artillery shells hit two villages. A Lebanese soldier died and three were wounded when another Israeli air strike destroyed their vehicle.

At the main border crossing into Lebanon from Syria, Israeli drones fired at two trucks and a third truck was destroyed by a warplane, security sources said. Four Lebanese customs officials and the three drivers were wounded.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said a ceasefire could be forged this week.

Despite its pause in air raids, Israel said it may still use aerial strikes to target Hizbollah leaders and rocket launchers and back up ground operations.

Senior Israeli officials said the government wanted to pursue its military offensive until an international force arrived to stop Hizbollah exploiting any pause to regroup.

But French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said an international force could be deployed only once a ceasefire and a clear political road map had been agreed.

France and Germany welcomed Israel's suspension of most air strikes but said it was not enough. Russia also demanded an immediate ceasefire.

But the United States, which blames Hizbollah for the war, is refusing to back calls for an immediate halt to the fighting.

Hizbollah fired two shells into the northern Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmona yesterday, but nobody was wounded.

A senior Israeli government official said an estimated two-thirds of Hizbollah's long-range missile capabilities had been destroyed in the conflict.

In clashes near the border three Israeli soldiers were wounded when a missile hit their tank, the army said.

Hizbollah said it had destroyed two Israeli tanks and damaged a third. It also said it had lost four fighters.

The UN said access for desperately needed aid convoys to southern Lebanon had not improved since Israeli agreed to a 48-hour suspension of air strikes.

Khaled Mansour, UN spokesman in Lebanon, said the United Nations was forced to stick to the same procedure it was using before the suspension - trying to get clearance for each aid convoy from the warring parties before leaving Beirut.

"We're planning to send three convoys to the south tomorrow but we're still waiting for the green light - which is not enough," he said. "There are massive needs in the region, and they are growing.

Meanwhile, a Red Cross convoy reached the flashpoint Lebanese border town of Bint Jbeil yesterday to evacuate the wounded and stranded residents who had been caught up in fierce fighting.

Ambulances from the Lebanese Red Cross and Civil Defence evacuated a number of wounded residents and the remaining few elderly who had stayed behind. It was the first convoy to reach the town which has suffered massive devastation, particularly in its centre where dozens of buildings were totally destroyed, he said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Lebanese protesters burn an Israeli and a U.S. flag during a protest, in the port city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Monday, July 31, 2006, against the Israeli strike that levelled a house in Qana Sunday, killing at least 60 people, mostly women and children, who had taken refuge there. (AP)