Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have staged daily support marches for Hezbollah, cheering the group's fight against the Israelis.

"We know that they did not intend to strike Palestinian territory. They intended to strike Israel," said Fahmi Zarer, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party.

Israeli jets fired at least one missile at a Lebanese army base in the village of Sarba, in the Iqlim al Tuffah province, a highland region where Hezbollah is believed to have offices and bases. One soldier was killed, bringing to 26 the number of Lebanese soldiers killed since the start of the Israeli offensive against Lebanon on July 12, when Hezbollah guerrillas seized two soldiers and killed three.

The Lebanese military has largely stayed out of the three-week-old conflict, though has said it will fight if Israel launches a wide-scale invasion, and Israeli warplanes have repeatedly attacked soldiers. It was not clear what prompted the airstrike on the army base.

In an incident denied by the Israeli military, Hezbollah said in a statement that it had attacked an Israeli army armored unit that crossed into Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying two tanks and killing or wounding their crews.

Israel wants to push Hezbollah away from the border, so Israeli patrols and civilians there are not in danger of attack. The army hopes to drive Hezbollah far enough north so that most of the guerrillas' rockets cannot reach the Jewish state.

Israeli officials have said their soldiers were to go as far as the Litani, about 18 miles from the border, and hold the ground until an international peacekeeping force comes ashore.

In Geneva, the UN's World Food Program said Israel had agreed to permit two oil tankers to sail into Lebanon to ease a growing fuel crisis in the country.

At least 540 Lebanese have been killed, including 468 civilians and 26 Lebanese soldiers and at least 46 Hezbollah guerrillas. The health minister says the toll could be as high as 750, including those still buried in rubble or missing. Fifty-five Israelis have died - 36 soldiers and 19 civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

The United Nations warned that the longer a spill of 110,000 barrels of oil is not cleaned up from Lebanon's coast, the more severe the environmental impact will be. The oil spilled two weeks ago after Israeli warplanes hit a coastal power plant.