The United Nations has called for an immediate three-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah to allow aid to enter south Lebanon, and for the scores of casualties to be evacuated for treatment.

|PIC1|UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland has come out on Friday saying children, elderly and disabled had been left completely isolated by the two weeks of fighting.

Friday also saw Prime Minister Tony Blair fly out to Washington DC to meet US President George Bush. It was expected by many to be an opportunity for Blair to urge the US premier to call for and immediate truce. However, once again any such announcement being made was dismissed by Bush, arguing instead for an international force to be deployed in Lebanon.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will return to the Middle East on Saturday.

Bush said she would “work with the leaders of Israel and Lebanon to seize this opportunity to achieve lasting peace and stability for both of their countries.”

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, said world leaders would discuss the deployment of a “stabilisation force” in Lebanon at a meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on Monday.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told that countries in a position to contribute troops to an international force would also be in attendance at Monday's meeting.

|PIC2|“Obviously it will be preliminary discussions because we do not have the mandate of the Security Council yet,” Annan said.

The UN Security Council is also due to discuss the issue later next week. While briefing the Security Council on Friday, Egeland said some 600 people had been killed by Israeli action in Lebanon, of which around a third were children.

Egeland said, “It's been horrific... There is something fundamentally wrong with the war, where there are more dead children than armed men.”

He said he would ask “for at least a 72-hour start of this cessation of hostilities so that we can evacuate the wounded, children, the elderly, the disabled from the crossfire in southern Lebanon.”

Egeland was speaking after completing a visit to Lebanon, Israel and the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, two mortar rounds hit a convoy of vehicles evacuating civilians from the village of Rmeish, close to the Israeli border. Two people travelling in a German TV car were wounded.

|TOP|Refugees from Rmeish said conditions were deteriorating rapidly in the area. They reported some of those still trapped in the village were drinking water from a stagnant pond.

A senior official at the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Lebanon has told the BBC that supplies were “running out very, very fast” in southern Lebanon.

“The south is definitely where the critical needs are at the moment. You've got active combat going on, several tens if not hundreds of thousands of persons displaced within the south,” Arafat Jamal said.

Aid agencies are also attempting to alert the world community about the deteriorating conditions of Lebanese civilians as a result of the clash.

|AD|“Up until July 20, our staff could not provide any relief because the area was under sporadic bombing,” said Lina Abi Rizk, World Vision’s project manager in East Sidon, Lebanon.

“In one of the schools where 400 displaced people are staying, there are only 100 mattresses to accommodate that number. The rest of the people are sleeping on the floor.”

According to the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) in Lebanon, more than 600,000 people are forcibly displaced as a result of the conflict.

Church World Service reported more than 400,000 internally displaced people have taken refuge in public and private schools in the country.

Lebanon was experiencing a “catastrophic humanitarian crisis,” said Guirgis I. Saleh, general secretary of the MECC in a report released by CWS on July 19, especially regarding food and medicine.

“Hence, all efforts should be deployed by the international community, churches and ecumenical councils and organisations worldwide to bring their support to ensure the basic requirements of the Lebanese population, and to work on a cease fire,” said Saleh.