BEIRUT — By air and on land, Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters battled fiercely Sunday in a last-minute surge of bloodletting before an official cease-fire went into effect this morning.
Plumes of smoke rose above the hills of the Lebanese port city of Tyre, and sirens warning of incoming rockets sounded across northern Israel minutes before the truce commenced at 8 a.m. Israeli airstrikes hit the town of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley and also targeted the Shiite town of Keyfoun, southeast of Beirut -- which had not been hit previously -- right up to the deadline, Lebanese media reported.
Along the Israel-Lebanon border, however, artillery appeared to fall silent for at least the first hour of the cease-fire.
The Israeli military said it would maintain its air and sea blockade of Lebanon to stop arms smuggling. Warplanes dropped leaflets in Tyre warning of retaliation if Hezbollah continued its rocket attacks.
Israeli tanks, armored vehicles and about 400 Israeli soldiers, many of them reservists, marched back into Israel about 6 a.m., carrying Hezbollah and Lebanese flags. The men, looking happy and relieved, were loaded onto pickup trucks on the Israeli side of the border near the town of Misgav Am.
The last-minute violence came amid signs of potentially serious snags in the Lebanese government's implementation of the U.N.-brokered truce. On Sunday afternoon, after sharp debate, the Israeli Cabinet formally approved the United Nations resolution calling for a cease-fire.
Throughout the day and into the night, Israeli warplanes and gunboats hammered southern Lebanon, leveling buildings and bombing other infrastructure around Tyre. In south Beirut, just outside Hezbollah-controlled suburbs, 20 explosions in three minutes destroyed a complex of shops, apartments and offices.
At least 22 people were reported killed in the various strikes.
Hezbollah guerrillas unleashed more than 220 rockets on northern Israel, one of the highest counts of the monthlong conflict. Several landed in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, where billows of black smoke rolled through blue sky. One person died in the daylong barrage.
The intensified fighting capped a weekend of some of the fiercest clashes in nearly five weeks of confrontation, after Israel widened its ground offensive in an eleventh-hour bid to clear out more Hezbollah fighters from southern Lebanon before the cease-fire.
