Beirut, Lebanon ? Hezbollah dealt Israel its heaviest losses in the Lebanon campaign Wednesday, killing nine soldiers in fierce firefights. With key Mideast players failing to agree on a formula for a cease-fire, an Israeli general said the operation could last weeks.

Israel said it intends to damage Hezbollah and establish a “security zone” that would be free of the guerrillas and extend 1.2 miles into Lebanon from the Israeli border. Such a zone would prevent Hezbollah from carrying out cross-border raids such as the one two weeks ago which triggered the Israeli military response.

Israel said it would maintain such a zone, with firepower or other means, until the arrival of an international force with muscle to be deployed in a wider swath of southern Lebanon – as opposed to the U.N. force already there that has failed to prevent the violence.

The Israeli bombardment has failed to stop guerrilla rocket fire, even while killing hundreds, driving up to 750,000 people from their homes and causing billion of dollars in damage. Hezbollah fired another large barrage into northern Israel on Wednesday – 151 rockets that wounded at least 31 people and damaged property from the suburbs of the port on Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea to the Hula Valley above the Sea of Galilee. Over the past two weeks, the guerrillas have fired 1,436 rockets into Israel.

Americans wait to board the last scheduled vessel, the Orient Queen cruise liner, used to transport Americans from Lebanon to Cyprus. Some 35,000 peoples, most from the United States, Canada and European countries, have been evacuated from Lebanon through Cyprus since fighting broke out between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas on July 12.

Pushing Hezbollah back with ground troops was proving to be bloody. Several thousand troops are in Lebanon, Israeli military officials said – mainly in a roughly 6-square-mile pocket around the town of Bint Jbail, a Hezbollah stronghold just over two miles from the border.

The Hezbollah fighters are heavily outnumbered, with some 100 in Bint Jbail and several hundred more in surrounding fields, bunkers and caves, according to the officials. But they use classic guerrilla tactics, choosing when to strike in the hilly territory they know well. They are dug in with extensive tunnel networks and stockpiling weapons, including rockets with which they pelted Israeli forces Wednesday.

Eight Israeli soldiers were killed and 22 wounded in the fighting around Bint Jbail, the army said. It later reported a ninth soldier killed and several other casualties in the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras.

Violence was also increasing on the other front of Israel’s fight on Islamic militants: Gaza, where Hamas-linked militants are holding an Israeli soldier seized a month ago. A force of 50 tanks and bulldozers entered the northern Gaza Strip to battle Hamas gunmen. Israeli air and artillery attacks killed 23 Palestinians, including at least 16 militants and three young girls.

A collapsed apartment building is shown Wednesday, a day after it was destroyed by renewed Israeli air strikes Tuesday, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. Hezbollah guerrillas battled to stop Israeli troops from taking the southern stronghold of Bint Jbail on Wednesday, inflicting several Israeli casualties, as Arab and Western foreign ministers assembled in Rome for talks on the crisis.

While the ground battle in Lebanon was intensifying, the bombardment in the rest of Lebanon appeared to be easing. Israeli jets were heard repeatedly over Beirut in the evening, but the capital saw no strikes.

But early today, local broadcasters said Israel hit an army base and an adjacent relay station belonging to Lebanese state radio at Aamchit, 30 miles north of Beirut, knocking down a transmission tower. It wasn’t immediately clear if the attack was by air or shelling from ships. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the reports.

Wednesday’s deaths brought to 51 the number of Israelis killed in the campaign, including 32 members of the military, according to the military.

In Lebanon, at least 423 people have been killed – including 376 civilians reported by the Health Ministry and security officials, 20 Lebanese soldiers and 27 fighters Hezbollah has acknowledged were killed. Israel says more than 100 guerrillas have been killed.

Also Wednesday, about 800 Americans boarded the last ship taking evacuees out of the war-ravaged country.

Those who departed Wednesday were the last of about 13,000 Americans who registered with the U.S. embassy to be evacuated. They left on the Orient Queen cruise liner, which would take them to Cyprus.