Hizbollah vows Lebanon will be Israel's 'graveyard'

BEIRUT - A defiant Hizbollah chief vowed today to turn south Lebanon into a "graveyard" for invading Israeli troops, hours after the Jewish state ordered an expanded ground offensive.

In a televised speech, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Israeli attacks had not weakened its rocket capabilities and called on the Arab residents of Haifa to quit the Israeli city to avoid being hurt by the guerrilla group's barrages.

"You won't be able to stay in our land, and if you come in, we'll force you out," said Nasrallah in a recorded speech shown on Hizbollah's television station.

"We will turn our precious southern land into a graveyard for the invading Zionists."

Israel decided today to expand its ground offensive in Lebanon, increasing pressure on major powers struggling to win agreement on a United Nations resolution to end the 29-day-old war.

Israeli troops thrust deeper into Lebanon and 11 Israeli soldiers were reported killed in fierce clashes with Hizbollah.

Nasrallah, whose group waged a war of attrition instrumental in ending Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, said that the United States was trying to impose Israeli demands on Lebanon through the draft resolution to end the fighting.

Nasrallah said his group supported a decision by the Lebanese government, which includes a Hizbollah minister, to deploy 15,000 troops to the border if that would bolster Lebanon's calls for the resolution to include a demand for Israel's immediate withdrawal from the south.

"The least you can say about this resolution is that it is unjust and oppressive," Nasrallah said.

"If everyone sees that deploying the army will help find a way out politically that would result in the halting of aggression ... this for us is a national and honourable way out."

Hizbollah, which largely controls Lebanon's southern border with Israel, had long resisted international pressure on Lebanon to deploy the Lebanese army to the south instead.

- REUTERS