Beirut: Israeli warplanes fired rockets at a target in eastern Lebanon on Monday, shortly before a UN-brokered truce was due to go into effect, Lebanese security sources said.
The raid occurred less than two hours before the truce between Israel and Hezbollah was set to officially start at 0000 hrs IST.
Israel was reported to have ordered its army on Monday to begin observing a UN-brokered ceasefire hours before it was due to take effect at 0000 hrs IST to end a month-long war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had told his Army to observe the truce from 2 am on Monday (1800 hrs IST on Sunday) and to start withdrawing some of its estimated 30,000 troops in southern Lebanon, Israel's Haaretz newspaper said on its Web site.
No independent confirmation of the report was immediately available. Earlier, Lebanese security sources said Israeli warplanes and ground forces had been pounding southern Lebanon into early on Monday.
They reported fierce battles between Israeli troops and Hizbollah guerrillas. Air strikes on the village of Brital near Lebanon's eastern border with Syria overnight killed at least nine civilians and wounded 33, medics said.
On Sunday, Israel's cabinet approved a UN Security Council resolution to end the fighting and deploy a United Nations force of up to 15,000 troops to help enforce the truce. The Lebanese government and Hezbollah have also agreed to the resolution.
"It will be a fragile truce," said a Western diplomat, referring to some early differing interpretations of the resolution by the two sides.
Hezbollah launched its heaviest one-day rocket barrage on Israel on Sunday since the start of the war. Israeli security officials said more than 250 rockets were fired, killing a man and wounding about 90 people.
The port city of Haifa was hit. Around 1,100 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 149 Israelis, including 109 soldiers, have been killed in the war, which was triggered when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.
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Meanwhile, Israeli officials said the Jewish state believed it would be entitled under the UN resolution to use force to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and to clear guerrilla positions out of southern Lebanon after the truce took effect.
Senior Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir said his country would not violate the truce. "If Hizbollah continues to fire rockets or shoots at our soldiers then we will have to respond. There will not be a violation from our side," he said.
Western diplomats and UN officials said they feared Israel's broad definition of "defensive" actions could lead to a resurgence in large-scale fighting and prevent the swift deployment of the UN troops, likely to be led by France.
Hezbollah has said its guerrillas would observe a truce once it began but reserved the right to fight Israeli soldiers still on Lebanese soil. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni repeated Israel's position that its troops would pull out from southern Lebanon only when the UN force arrived.
The United Nations has said the deployment could take up to 10 days. The Lebanese government, which includes two Hezbollah ministers, postponed a meeting due to divisions on discussing the disarmament of Hezbollah, the only group to keep its weapons after Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, a government source said.
The deployment of the Lebanese army in the south is another key part of the UN resolution adopted on Friday.
The Israeli army said five soldiers were killed and 25 wounded in fighting on Sunday, while Lebanese security sources said Israeli air raids, including fierce attacks on Beirut's southern suburbs, killed at least 22 people. The Israeli military reported its worst single-day death toll when 19 soldiers were killed on Saturday and five were feared dead after their helicopter was shot down.
The Israeli army said around 530 Hizbollah guerrillas had been killed during the war. Hizbollah has acknowledged only a few dozen dead during the war. The Haaretz newspaper reported the government was willing to discuss a possible release of Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the freeing of the two captured Israeli soldiers.
The war in Lebanon coincided with an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip to free another captured soldier. More than 170 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, have been killed in the military campaign in Gaza.
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