The Lebanese government is under international pressure to deploy troops in the south to rein in Hezbollah guerrillas - but even before the fighting many considered it too weak to do so without deeply fracturing the country.

An Italian paper quoted Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora on Thursday as making his strongest statement yet against the Shiite militant group. But Saniora's office quickly said he was misquoted.

The Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera quoted him as saying in an interview that Hezbollah has created a "state within a state," adding: "The entire world must help us disarm Hezbollah. But first we need to reach a cease-fire," Saniora told

But Saniora issued a statement denying the statement. He said he told the paper that the international community must help press Israel from Chebaa Farms, a small border area that Lebanon claims and Hezbollah points to as proof of the continued need for armed resistance.

Saniora told the paper that "the continued presence of Israeli occupation of Lebanese lands in the Chebaa Farms region is what contributes to the presence of Hezbollah weapons. The international community must help us in (getting) an Israeli withdrawal from Chebaa Farms so we can solve the problem of Hezbollah's arms," the satement said. There was no immediate comment from the Italian paper.

A day earlier, Saniora issued an urgent appeal for a cease-fire, saying his country "has been torn to shreds." On Wednesday, warplanes pounded areas in the south where Hezbollah operates - but civilian residential neighborhoods bore the brunt, with dozens of houses destroyed.

Dallal said Israel had hit "1,000 targets in the last 8 days - 20 percent were missile launching sites and the rest were control and command centers, missiles and so forth."

Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan insisted the Israeli army never targets civilians but has no way of knowing whether civilians are in an area they are striking. "Civilians might be in the area because Hezbollah is operating from civilian territory," Nehushtan said.

He said that Hezbollah has fired more than 1,100 rockets at civilian areas in Israel since the fighting erupted and that 12 percent - or about 750,000 people - of Israel's population currently live in areas that can be targeted by the guerrilla group.

Israel said its airstrikes so far have destroyed "about 50 percent" of Hezbollah's arsenal - and it has been trying to take out its top leaders.

Wednesday evening, the Israeli military said that aircraft dropped 23 tons of explosives on on what the military believed was a bunker used by senior Hezbollah leaders in the Bourj al-Barajneh neighborhood of Beirut between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Hezbollah said none of its members were hurt in the strike and denied a leadership bunker was in the area, saying a building under construction to be a mosque was hit.

Hezbollah has a headquarters compound in Bourj al-Barajneh that is off limits to the Lebanese police and army, so security officials could not confirm the strike.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman told CNN on Thursday said his country would not issue a statement about the attack until it is sure of all the facts. But he added, "I can assure you that we know exactly what we hit. ... This was no religious site. This was indeed the headquarters of the Hezbollah leadership."