BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 18— A bomb killed 53 people and wounded more than 100 in the Shiite city of Kufa today, a day after at least 48 people died asdozens of gunmen suspected of being Sunni Arabs went on a rampage through a mostly Shiite market area in the town of Mahmudiya, according to Iraqi officials.
The United States and Israel reacted skeptically, with President Bush urging tartly that Mr. Annan telephone President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a key sponsor of Hezbollah, “and make something happen.” In Russia for a Group of 8 summit meeting, Mr. Bush expressed his views to Mr. Blair, using a vulgarity that was caught by an open microphone.
With the Lebanese death toll exceeding 200 and the Israeli count at 24, the increased efforts to turn to diplomacy showed little prospect of an immediate way out. In Lebanon, a vast majority of those killed were civilians, while in Israel about half of the dead were civilians.
In a televised speech to the Israeli Parliament, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to continue the offensive until Hezbollah freed two captured Israeli soldiers, the Lebanese Army was deployed along the border, and Hezbollah was effectively disarmed. Hezbollah has consistently rejected those terms.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to the Middle East to try to resolve the crisis, Bush administration officials said. The timing is still up in the air, and the trip will be a gamble. Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Daniel Ayalon, said on CNN that it might be too soon for Ms. Rice to accomplish anything.
Israel intensified its bombing across Lebanon on Monday, hitting an army barracks in Tripoli and bases in Baalbek, both in the north. It shelled fuel tanks in Beirut’s port and continued pounding southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs. In the afternoon, Israel made a brief ground raid into Lebanon.
Israeli military officials said they succeeded in hitting a rocket launcher in Beirut carrying one of Hezbollah’s longest-range rockets, an Iranian Zelzal, with a range of 62 to 124 miles. The attack caused the rocket to flare in the air, leading to reports that an Israeli plane might have been shot down.
At least 43 Lebanese were killed Monday, according to Lebanese authorities, raising the toll to more than 200 since the Israeli offensive began Thursday. In one large group of fatalities, a missile hit a minibus, killing 12 civilians as they were driving through Rmeileh, a seaside town south of Beirut.
[Early Tuesday, Israeli warplanes pounded south Lebanon, killing six members of a family in Aytaroun village, Reuters reported.]
Some 30 rockets fired by Hezbollah hit Haifa and other parts of northern Israel. One rocket leveled much of an apartment house, critically wounding one person. Another Hezbollah rocket landed next to a hospital in Safed, slightly wounding six people.
Israel’s rejection of an international force stems partly from recent history. The foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said in an interview that such a force must be able to intervene, unlike the current troops, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or Unifil, which was established in 1978.
“We have an experience with Unifil,” she said: When an Israeli was seized previously, “they just watched.”
The Israeli military wants to continue its largely aerial campaign against Hezbollah, with one senior Israeli official suggesting that Hezbollah’s capacity to launch missiles had already been degraded “about 30 percent.”
Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, on the Israeli general staff, said, “We have damaged Hezbollah but they still have significant operational capacity.” He noted the decline in rockets launched into Israel in the last two days — an average of 40 a day, down from initial highs of 150 — and said it was a testament to the damage caused by the Israelis.
“It will take time, it’s more than a matter of days on the military side,” he said. “We aim to change the situation and not go back to where we are.”
Israel’s deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski, told Agence France-Presse: “The operation will last for at least another week. The international pressure on Israel will allow us to continue for another week at least.”
In his speech, Prime Minister Olmert said, “The terrorist organizations we are fighting take their orders from the Tehran-Damascus axis of evil.” He said Israel would continue to fight until both Hezbollah and Hamas stopped attacks on Israel.
“In Lebanon, we will fight to enforce the demands long voiced by the international community,” he said. He demanded “an absolute end to fire” from Hezbollah, “the deployment of the Lebanese Army all along the southern border, and the departure of Hezbollah from this region and fulfillment of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559.”
That resolution calls for the pullout of all foreign forces from Lebanon, the disbanding and disarmament of all militias and the deployment of the Lebanese Army on the border. But the Security Council included no provisions to implement the agreement, and the Lebanese government, which contains some Hezbollah ministers, is considered too weak to do so.
