Monday, July 17, 2006; Posted: 11:58 a.m. EDT (15:58 GMT)

"We have no intention of allowing anyone to stop us before we complete the creation of a buffer zone," Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said.

In six days of fighting, 165 people have been killed and 415 wounded in Lebanon, Lebanese internal security sources said.

Twenty-four Israelis have died in the conflict, including 12 soldiers, and more than 300 have been wounded, Israeli military sources said.

The fighting began last week after Hezbollah guerrillas abducted two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

Israel responded with an offensive in Lebanon aimed at Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group with a strong presence in the southern part of the country that also holds seats in the Lebanese government. Hezbollah guerrillas began firing rockets into northern Israel.

The United States and Israel say that Hezbollah receives financial and political assistance, as well as weapons and training, from Iran and Syria.

Suspected Hezbollah rockets hit the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Monday, a day after a deadly strike on a train depot in the city.

Israel closed the port in its third-largest city in the wake of Monday's rockets, Reuters reported. Haifa is one of Israel's key shipment points.

A large cloud of smoke could be seen over the port area. Another rocket landed in the sea.

A residential building also partially collapsed when a rocket hit it, injuring at least 11 people,

The barrage also hit the towns of Sefad and Tiberias, but no casualties were reported, Israeli medical sources said.

Earlier reports suggested Israeli ground forces had entered southern Lebanon, but an Israeli military source said that there is no Israeli ground operation going on at present. The source said a small Israeli military unit "destroyed one or two Hezbollah outposts just over the line in Lebanon last night."

"At the moment, there are no military ground troops in Lebanon, and we are working primarily with an air campaign," the source said.

Meanwhile, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman denied an Israeli plane had gone down over east Beirut. Video footage showing an aircraft falling from the sky may have been a missile crashing instead, the spokesman said.

Arabic-language television networks earlier reported an Israeli plane went down.

International force proposed

In a conversation inadvertently picked up by an open microphone during the Group of Eight summit in Russia, President Bush disclosed that he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East.

Despite the president's remarks, the White House told The Associated Press that it had nothing to announce about a Rice trip.

The development came after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for an international stabilization force to be sent to the Israeli-Lebanese border to help end the fighting.

The proposed force would be the first step in what Annan and Blair said should be a series of actions that would stop the hostilities.

"The only way we are going to get a cessation of hostilities is the deployment of an international force to stop the bombardment of Israel and get Israel to stop its attacks on Hezbollah," Blair said at a news conference in St. Petersburg at the end of the G-8 summit.

Annan said the U.N. Security Council would have to discuss the matter but said such a force would be only a part of a comprehensive plan of action to stop the fighting.

Beirut port bombed

Earlier Monday, Israel bombed Beirut's port, an army barracks and the capital's southern suburbs.

Video footage of the strike's aftermath showed black smoke billowing into the air over the port against a backdrop of large shipping containers and the charred remains of a truck. At least two people died in the attack.

In the city of Abdeh, about 50 miles (about 80 kilometers) north of Beirut, three Israeli missiles struck an army barracks, officials said, killing six soldiers and wounding 28.

Israeli strikes Monday in the Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border killed seven people, authorities said. Forty-three others were wounded, and a girl is missing.

The strikes followed Hezbollah rocket attacks Sunday on northern Israeli cities, including one that struck a train depot in Haifa and killed eight Israelis.

Meanwhile, several countries continued efforts to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon.

The Lebanese government insists it has nothing to do with the Hezbollah attacks and has called for a cease-fire.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer" on Sunday that the Israeli attacks had opened "the gates of hell" with what he called a disproportionate response to Hezbollah's initial raid last week.

Israel says it will only stop its campaign when the abducted troops are freed, Hezbollah withdraws from southern Lebanon and rocket attacks stop.