Deadly Israel raid on UN post overshadows Lebanon crisis meet

(AFP) An Israeli air raid on south Lebanon killed as many as four UN observers, overshadowing an international crisis meeting due to open in Rome, as Hezbollah vowed to fire rockets further into the heart of Israel.

The deaths, which UN chief Kofi Annan said were the result of Israel's "apparently deliberate targeting" of a UN post, also drew a strong protest from France, whose officers currently command the nearly 30-year-old UN force.

"I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces of a UN observer post in southern Lebanon that has killed two UN military observers, with two more feared dead," Annan said in a statement released in Rome.

French ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, president of the UN Security Council for July, said: "We condemn this bombing on a UNIFIL position."

The attack on the UN post in the hilltop town of Khiam, once the site of an infamous Israeli jail but now a Hezbollah stronghold, came amid an intensive bombardment of the border area as Israeli troops advanced further into Lebanon.