Military commanders met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to seek the green light to widen the ground offensive in Hezbollah's stronghold of southern Lebanon, army radio reported, after three civilians and 12 soldiers were killed in rocket attacks Sunday.

In a possible sign of expanding military operations, the Israeli army warned Lebanese who live south of the Litani River not to go outdoors after 10:00 pm (1900 GMT).

The top military brass vowed to plough on with Israel's 27-day offensive against the fundamentalist Shiite militia as ceasefire talks at the United Nations faltered.

"We are continuing operations to clean up southern Lebanon and to meet the goals we have set ourselves, regardless of any possible ceasefire," said the commander of Israel's northern military region, General Alon Friedman.

His comments were echoed by Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, who said the "number one objective is to stop the rocket fire."

"(The army) has not been given any time limit to achieve this goal," he said, warning that operations will continue "with no regards to a ceasefire as long as the objective is not achieved."

Israel has sent more and more ground forces into southern Lebanon in an effort to prevent Hezbollah from firing short-range rockets, small and mobile weapons that cannot be detected from the air and that have been responsible for the majority of the war's Israeli civilian casualties.

"We are at a crucial stage of the war," Defense Minister Amir Peretz told parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee. "The most important thing is to push the rockets and rocket launchers beyond the Litani."

Peretz was also quoted as saying he had ordered the military to "eliminate rocket launchers and missiles wherever they are if the diplomatic process does not produce results."

Minister without portfolio Eitan Cabel told army radio that "an occupation of a security zone in south Lebanon is needed for two to three weeks, followed by a cleaning up of the sector to considerably reduce the firing of short-range rockets."

The Israeli army says that two divisions, or up to 20,000 troops, are currently deployed up to 10 kilometers (six miles) inside southern Lebanon, and observers warn that they could advance further.

"It's a fact that Israel has not been able to prevent the short-range rockets," reserve general Uzi Dayan, former chief of Israel's national security council, told AFP.

"Thus the sole solution is to penetrate further into Lebanon, at least 30 kilometers, to solve the problem of Katyusha launchers in this area," he said.

Both Israel and Hezbollah appear to be taking advantage of the failure of world powers at the United Nations to agree on a ceasefire resolution.

Although the UN Security Council had been expected to adopt a resolution by Tuesday, diplomats said they could no longer say when a vote would take place after Lebanon objected to the text proposed by the United States and France.

"The government has given the army carte blanche to continue its ground operations in Lebanon under the hypothesis that there won't be a ceasefire before next week," an advisor to one Israeli minister told AFP.

But even as the ground troops pushed further into Lebanon, Israeli officials vowed that the Jewish state had no intention of remaining in the territory, from which it withdrew in 2000 after two decades of war and occupation under intense public pressure and rising troop deaths.

"Israel has absolutely no intention of keeping its forces in Lebanon and will leave as soon as it gets a guarantee that Hezbollah will not regain its control over the territory," Housing Minister Meir Sheetrit told AFP.

Israel wants an international security force to be deployed in southern Lebanon in order to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and threatening the Jewish state after the end of the current hostilities.

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