US President George W. Bush said after talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Washington Friday that Rice was heading back to the region to seek support for a UN Security Council resolution.

"She will work with the leaders of Israel and Lebanon to seize this opportunity to achieve lasting peace and stability for both of their countries," Bush said of Rice, who had already held crisis talks in the Middle East earlier this week.

Blair, under pressure over his support for unwavering US backing for Israel, said world powers would meet at UN headquarters in New York Monday to discuss the possible deployment of a multinational "stabilisation force" in Lebanon, paving the way for the Security Council to take up a resolution on the conflict.

But both Bush and Blair again ruled out a quick truce in the escalating confict now in its 18th day, even as the United Nations appealed for a truce on urgent humanitarian grounds.

UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland called for a 72-hour truce to allow casualties to be evacuated and food and medicine to be sent into the war zone.

He cited Lebanese health ministry figures saying that more than 600 people had been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched its offensive against Hezbollah targets on July 12 in response to the capture of two soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid.

An AFP count has put the death toll in Lebanon at more than 430, the vast majority of them civilians.

With Israel calling up thousands of army reservists to bolster its assault aimed at stopping rocket fire and freeing the captured soldiers, Hezbollah militants fired a new heavy-warhead missile at the Jewish state.

Israeli police said an "unknown" missile capable of carrying 100 kilos of explosives was among five that landed in Afula, 50 kilometres (35 miles) south of the border with Lebanon, causing no casualties.

The Shiite militant group said it had fired for the first time a salvo of what it called "Khaibar I" missiles "on the Zionist region of Afula, beyond Haifa".

The strike came after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed that his guerrillas would fire rockets at Israel beyond the northern city of Haifa, after so far using only shorter-range Katyusha rockets against Israel.

The attack also came on the day the Israeli military said it would deploy Patriot anti-missile batteries near Tel Aviv -- Israel's largest city -- if Hezbollah used long-range missiles.

Meanwhile a senior EU delegation in Beirut threw its support behind Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's plan to resolve the conflict which calls for an exchange of prisoners between Lebanon and Israel, and a pacification of their common border.

Bush and Blair urged Syria and Iran, both accused of funding and arming Hezbollah, to join the search for an end to the conflict or risk more opposition from the international community.

"They can either come in and participate as proper and responsible members of the international community, or they will face the risk of increasing confrontation," Blair warned.

With 800,000 people displaced by the fighting, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) criticised what it called the "unacceptable" humanitarian situation in Lebanon.

"Much more has to be done by Israeli forces... to protect and spare civilians in the conduct of military operations," said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the ICRC's director of operations, at the same time criticising Hezbollah's firing of rockets at civilian areas.

He also said the ICRC had not received any positive response from Hezbollah in response to its request to visit the two abducted Israeli soldiers.

International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) said Israel's promised humanitarian aid corridors in south Lebanon were an illusion.

"In effect there is no real humanitarian access in the south, the international community is deluding itself with talk of humanitarian corridors," its operations chief Christopher Stokes told reporters in Beirut.

Despite Asian and European Union calls for a halt to fighting, including from EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Bush again warned against what he called "fake peace".

Setting a different pace, French President Jacques Chirac said Friday he wanted a UN resolution calling for an immediate truce adopted "as quickly as possible".

Bush's position reinforced the stance adopted -- despite Arab protests -- at an international conference in Rome Wednesday.

Israel seized on that refusal to call for a quick truce as a green light to press its offensive.

But that claim, already rejected by other delegates, was dismissed Friday as "outrageous" by Washington, in its strongest open criticism of Israel yet during the conflict.

"Any such statement is outrageous," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said when asked about Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon's assertion that the Rome meeting gave Israel "authorisation".

Israeli attacks on south Lebanon Friday killed 10 more civilians, including a Jordanian, amid fierce clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants.

Fighting around the flashpoint town of Bint Jbeil flared, but police said Israeli troops had redeployed during the afternoon.

Ramon said Thursday that anyone left in the region would be treated as an enemy combatant.

A total of 51 Israelis have also died in cross-border fighting, most of them soldiers, with the government deciding to call up three divisions of reservists -- as many as 30,000 more troops.

Army chief Dan Halutz claimed "enormous" damage inflicted on Hezbollah with hundreds of its fighters hit, as an army spokeswoman said 26 Hezbollah guerrillas had been killed in firefights in Bint Jbeil.

Hezbollah says it has lost a total of 30 men.

In the Gaza Strip, where Israel is engaged in another assault to retrieve a third captured serviceman, two people -- one of them a teenager -- were killed, bringing the death toll from the month-old offensive to at least 145 Palestinians and one Israeli.

The army said two Israeli children were lightly wounded on Friday when a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed on the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon.

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