Israel continued air strikes against Hezbollah installations in Lebanon as soldiers advanced in the southern part of the country.

There was “a heavy exchange'' of gunfire north of Marounar-Ras, a Lebanese village about 2 kilometers (1,2 miles) from the border, an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said by telephone, speaking anonymously by regulation. Two men suspected of terrorism were detained, she said. Aircraft hit Hezbollah bases yesterday after Israeli towns came under rocket attack.

Israel may accept a multinational force in Lebanon as a means of ending the conflict, so long as it is manned by European Union troops and monitors Lebanon's border with Syria, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamic group that triggered the fighting when it seized two Israeli soldiers, has rejected the presence of an international force in southern Lebanon.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice begins a visit to Israel today as the fighting enters its 13th day. More than 370 Lebanese and 37 Israelis have been killed. Hezbollah said 13 of its fighters have been killed.

“A cease-fire is urgent,'' Agence France-Presse cited Rice as saying during her flight from Washington. “It is however important to have conditions that make it sustainable.''

Rice has said the US wants a “robust” international force to oust Hezbollah from the southern region. Israel would be open to North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops policing the Israel-Lebanese border, where a United Nations contingent has been stationed since 1978, Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the US, said yesterday on CBS's The US will consider the proposal, John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations, said on CNN's “Late Edition''

program. “We have been looking carefully at the possibility of a multinational force perhaps authorized by the Security Council, but not a UN-helmeted force.'

' Hezbollah rejects the presence of an international military unit, said Ali Fayyad, a member of the group's leadership.

“A force that will act as a deterrent to Hezbollah would be an instrument to defend Israel without taking Lebanon's interest into consideration,'' Fayyad said in a telephone interview two days ago. “We don't accept that.''

Syria yesterday supported an immediate cease-fire to allow talks on releasing the two Israeli soldiers. Syria would be “more than willing'' to engage in serious diplomacy aimed at reaching a comprehensive settlement, Imad Moustapha, its ambassador to the US, said on CBS's “Face the Nation.''

Israeli jets carried out more than 40 attacks on targets in Lebanon during the night, including nine missile-launching areas directed at Haifa, Israel's third-biggest city, the IDF spokeswoman said. Lebanese police said four people were killed in raids yesterday.

Soldiers captured Maroun ar-Ras from Hezbollah fighters yesterday. The advance today is a continuation of the operation and isn't a new incursion, the spokeswoman said.

Hezbollah fired one Katyusha rocket into Israel overnight, the army said. It fired more than 90 yesterday, six of which hit Haifa, killing two people, police said.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Hezbollah has fired about 2,200 rockets since fighting began July 12, half of which have struck northern Israeli towns, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

The Israeli military considers the group will be able to keep firing missiles for a month unless operations against their bases are stepped up, the newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information.

Israel hasn't launched a full-scale military attack on Lebanon or Hezbollah since its troops were pulled out of a swathe of southern Lebanon held for 18 years until May 2000. Several thousand reserve troops were mobilized three days ago for the first time since the conflict began. The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon now has about 1,990 troops there.

The contingent has failed to prevent the fighting.

As many as 1-million people in Lebanon may be affected by Israeli bombing and much of the infrastructure in Beirut and surrounding areas has been destroyed, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said last week.

Jan Egeland, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, yesterday visited Beirut to begin an appeal for aid for half a million people made homeless by the fighting.

“This is destruction of block after block of mainly residential areas,'' Egeland said as he toured Beirut's southern suburbs. “It seems to be an excessive use of force in an area with so many citizens.''

Countries are continuing to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon. About 11 260 US citizens had been taken out of the country, the State Department said yesterday. About 2 800 are scheduled to leave today, it said.

Crude oil may rise on concern the conflict will spread and disrupt shipments from the Middle East. Nineteen of 38 analysts and traders surveyed by Bloomberg News said prices will rise next week. Prices reached a record $78,40 a barrel on July 14.

Israel started its attack on Lebanon two weeks after it sent its forces into the Gaza Strip when a group led by the Islamic Hamas movement kidnapped a soldier in a cross-border raid. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, razing Jewish settlements it established after seizing the area from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War.