Scenes from the Mideast Conflict

An Israeli soldier, wounded in Lebanon, is evacuated to Rambam hospital in the city of Haifa, northern Israel, Wednesday.  (Ariel Schalit / AP)

Israeli soldiers help guide a tank driver as they attempt to tow another disabled tank away from the border area. Israeli forces sustained heavy losses in intense fighting in Bint Jibel, a Hezbollah stronghold 4 kilometers inside the Lebanese border.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

An Israeli soldier prays near an armored personnel carrier at a staging area on the Lebanese border.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Leonid Suzan, 52, talks on his mobile phone in a hallway lined with extra gurneys and operating tables in the underground facilities at Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. Leonid received shrapnel wounds on his arm in a Katyusha rocket attack.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Mohsin Mari, 6, holds his nose as his mother Rania Mari tends to some of his wounds in the pediatric surgery ward in the underground facilities at Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. The hospital’s above ground facilities are all but deserted as all fuctions have been moved to the extensive protected facility. The hospital, only five miles from the Lebanese border, can accomodate 650 beds and has eight operating rooms which are fully protected from conventional as well as chemical and biological attacks.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

The last of four Israeli military helicopters leaves the frontlines carrying wounded Israeli soldiers. Israeli forces sustained heavy losses in intense fighting in Bint Jibel, a Hezbollah stronghold 4 kilometers inside the Lebanese border.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Smoke rises from the city of Tyre, Lebanon, where a six-story building was struck by an Israeli bomb.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Panicked residents flag down rescue trucks moments after Israeli bombs flattened a six-story building in Tyre, Lebanon.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Panicked residents of Tyre, Lebanon, rush to the rubble of a six-story building flattened by Israeli bombs.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

A large UN shipment of food and medical supplies arrives in Tyre and is loaded into warehouses as Israeli shelling continues throughout southern Lebanon.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Israeli soldiers examine the damage from a rocket fired from Lebanon at a cemetery in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.  (Eli Dasa / AP)

Israeli soldiers fire artillery from their position near the Lebanese border in northern Israel Tuesday.  (Jacob Silberberg / AP)

A Lebanese man carries his belongings past the ruins of buildings in a street in the Hezbollah stronghold of south of Beirut Tuesday.  (Ali Haidar / EPA)

A French navy landing vessel carrying 66 foreign evacuees arrives in the hull of the warship Siroco from the southern Lebanese town of Naqura, a zone where there is heavy fighting along the Israeli border.  (Eric Feferberg / AP)

Israeli soldiers unload seized weapons and bodies, which they claim are dead Hezbollah fighters, after crossing from Lebanon to the northern Israeli town of Yiron.  (David Guttenfelder / AP)

Displaced Lebanese are seen at a shelter in an old courthouse after fleeing the fighting in southern Lebanon and arriving in the port city of Sidon in southern Lebanon.  (Kevin Frayer / AP)

Israeli troops gather as they prepare to cross the Lebanese-Israeli border.  (Yaron Kaminsky / AP)

An Israeli tank drives the through Lebanese-Israeli border en route to the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbail where the Israeli Army was involved in heavy fighting Tuesday.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Gila Bitton, 36, (background) smokes a cigarette in the entrance to the bomb shelter below her apartment building in Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel. Bitton’s apartment building was damaged by a Hezbollah rocket in 1998. She has spent the last 12 days with about 25 other people in the shelter, coming up only for essential duties and to smoke occasionally.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

A large plume of smoke billows in the town of Khiam, in southern Lebanon after Israeli air raids targeted it Tuesday.  (Lotfallah Daher / AP)

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora looks through the window of a U.N helicopter that took him to Cyprus, in Beirut, Lebanon.  (Hussein Malla / AP)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert follows US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to their meeting after their press conference at Olmert’s office in Jerusalem. Speaking before their meeting, Rice, called for a cease-fire, but not at any price, saying “We need to ensure that we will not return to the previous situation.”  (David Silverman AFP/Getty Images)

SAUDI ENVOY: Prince Saud al Faisal has urged a cease-fire, prisoner exchange.  (SHAWN THEW / EPA)

FAMILY’S LOSS: The death of Liran Saadia, an Israeli soldier, is mourned by soldiers and family members at a military funeral in Kiryat Shemona, near the border with Lebanon.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

FACE OF WAR: Injured Lebanese civilians are brought to Jabal Amel Hospital in Tyre. The area around the city, identified by Israel as a major source of Hezbollah rocket launches, was repeatedly struck by jets. Dozens of fleeing civilians were caught in the attacks.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

BLASTED BEIRUT: A view of Israeli airstrike destruction. The U.N.’s top humanitarian official said rebuilding Lebanon’s infrastructure could cost billions.  (WAEL HAMZEH / EPA)

Israeli artillery fires at a target in southern Lebanon from a position near the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. According to the Israeli military, troops backed by artillery and tank fire seized control of a Lebanese border village on Saturday and recovered weapons from another town in Hezbollah territory.  (Oded Balilty / AP)

Israeli tanks line up Friday on a road near the Israeli town of Avivim near the Lebanese border. Israel massed tanks and troops on the border, called up reserves and warned civilians to flee Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon as it prepared for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone.  (David Guttenfelder / AP)

Smoke can be seen as Israeli troops explode the local headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Nablus during the third day of Israeli army operation in the West Bank town of Nablus. A Palestinian man was killed from the explosion while he was standing at the window of his house.  (Alaa Badarneh / EPA)

Hospital workers carry one of more than 70 caskets to be buried in a mass grave near the El Buss Palestinian Refugee camp in Tyre, Lebanon.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Mariam Ismail Al Abdullah, 50, wails in anger and sadness over the death of 12 close family members who were killed by Israeli rockets as they attempted to flee the village of Marwahin in Southern Lebanon less than a week ago. Their bodies lay alongside more than 70 other war casualties outside the Public Hospital of the El Buss Palestinian Refugee camp in the city of Tyre, Lebanon.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

A U.S. Navy sailor guides a LCU (Landing Craft Utility) full of American citizens as it prepares to leave a beach north of Beirut. The craft is headed to the USS Nashville.  (Kevork Djansezian / AP)

Lebanese police officers carry an elderly American citizen on a wheelchair to the Nashville’s landing craft.  (Kevork Djansezian / AP)

Americans fleeing fighting in Lebanon will travel to Cyprus on the USS Nashville.  (Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP)

A Marine carries a child to the Nashville’s LCU.  (Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP)

A U.S. Navy sailor mans a gun on the Nashville’s LCU.  (Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP)

A young Israeli woman sunbathes at Bat Galim Beach during a missile attack on the city of Haifa.  (Doron Golan / EPA)

An Israeli Air Force F-16C jet bound for Lebanon takes off from Ramat David Air Base in northern Israel. The pilots of the 117th squadron have flown more than 150 missions against Hezbollah targets since the latest conflict erupted 8 days ago.  (David Silverman / Getty Images)

Israeli warplanes launched new airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, shortly after daybreak Thursday, followed by strikes in the guerrillas’ heartland in the south and eastern Bekaa Valley.  (Baz Ratner / AP)

In this photo released by the US Department of Defense, U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit prepare American citizens to be loaded onto Marine Corps CH-53 helicopters heading to Cyprus.  (James H. Frank AFP/Getty Images)

A badly wounded man is rushed to surgery by hospital staff at the Jabal Amel Hospital in the coastal city of Tyre, Southern Lebanon.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Surrounded with all they could carry away from their home, Zakiya Bidawi comforts her ailing husband, Muhamed, in the lobby of the Tyre Rest House. Many residents of Tyre sought refuge there as Israeli bombing raids continued.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Nayfi Bourgi, 82, rests in the halls of the rest house.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Nahim Kasam from Tyre is moved from the Jabel Amel Hospital to a safer hospital in the country’s north.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Photos of Lebanese citizens in the debris of the destroyed buildings in Beirut, following Israeli airstrikes.  (Wael Hamzeh / EPA)

Relatives carry the bodies of Palestinian Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militants who were killed during an Israeli army operation. The funeral took place in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday.  (Nasser Ishtayeh / AP)

Family of Ahmed Abdo, 14, at his funeral in the Nuseirat refugee campin the central Gaza Strip. Adbo was killed after Israeli tanks moved into the Mughazi refugee camp in central Gaza early Wednesday. It was the latest incursion in Israel’s three-week military push into the seaside territory.  (Ali Ali / EPA)

Israeli soldiers huddle together and grieve at the funeral of Yonatan Hadassi in Kibbutz Merhavya on Thursday.  (David Guttenfelder / AP)

Hadassi was killed the day before in an exchange of fire with Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanon side of the border.  (David Guttenfelder / AP)

Israeli firefighters see to a helicopter after it crashed on a hillside near the northern Israeli village Romot Naftaly on Friday morning.  (David Guttenfelder / AP)

Israeli soldiers prepare artillery shells to be fired towards southern Lebanon from the northern border of Israel, in the western Galilee.  (Gali Tibbon AFP/Getty Images)

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and proposed a blueprint to end the deadly fighting in Lebanon.  (Gali Tibbon AFP/Getty Images)

An Israeli woman looks at the damage inside a house that was directly hit by a rocket fired by Hezbollah guerrillas from neighboring Lebanon in the northern Israeli town of Carmiel Saturday, July 15.  (Oded Balilty / AP)