In their raids on Beirut Monday, Israeli planes killed two people in the harbor and started a large fire that was later extinguished. A French ship was due to arrive in the port later Monday to evacuate Europeans.

The Israeli jets also set fire to a gas storage tank in the northern neighborhood of Dawra and another fuel storage tank at Beirut airport, sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky. The airport has been closed since Thursday, when Israeli jets blasted its runways.

Israeli missiles also blasted southern Beirut, causing three explosions that shook the city. The targets were not immediately clear, but Hezbollah has a host of offices, clinics, schools, social clubs and the homes of its leaders in the southern suburbs.

Elsewhere in Lebanon, Israeli planes again hit the Beirut to Damascus highway, which has been targeted as part of a strategy of severing Lebanon's links to the outside world. Monday's attacks struck the highway in the eastern Bekaa Valley and killed two people.

In another attack, eight Lebanese soldiers were killed when Israeli aircraft attacked a small fishing port at Abdeh in northern Lebanon near a highway leading to Syria. Witnesses and security officials said 12 Lebanese soldiers were wounded in the attack.

An Israeli army spokesman said his force was investigating the attack. "In principle, the Israeli military does not target Lebanese soldiers," he said.

Hezbollah is not known to operate in northern Lebanon, but the Israeli army said it had targeted radar stations there because they had been used by Hezbollah to hit a warship on Friday. It all but accused the Lebanese military of lending its support to Hezbollah.

"The attacks... are against radar stations used, among other things, in the attack on the Israeli missile boat, by Hezbollah in cooperation with the Lebanese military," the Israeli army spokesman told The Associated Press.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday that despite Israel's attacks, the guerrillas were "in their full strength and power" and that their "missile stockpiles are still full."

"When the Zionists behave like there are no rules and no red lines and no limits to the confrontation, it is our right to behave in the same way," Nasrallah said in a televised address, looking tired. He said Hezbollah had hit Haifa because of Israel's strikes on Lebanese civilians.

The Israeli military warned residents of south Lebanon to flee, promising heavy retaliation after the Haifa assault.

In one airstrike on southern Lebanon early Monday, an Israeli missile missed its apparent target - a Hezbollah site - and hit a private house, killing two people, according to security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.