The UN today said it had "indefinitely postponed" moves to send an international stabilisation force to south Lebanon, as both sides in the conflict resumed strikes.

Less than 24 hours after a two-day pause in the bombing was announced, the Israeli military and Hizbullah fighters attacked again.

Tonight, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said there would be no ceasefire "in the coming days".

"We cannot allow the terrorist state that Hizbullah had built up across the border to continue to grow strong," he said. "We cannot allow them to continue to amass weapons. We have decided to fight back and will continue until the threat has been removed."

In New York, a UN official said a meeting scheduled for this afternoon to discuss sending a multinational force to the region had been delayed "until there is more political clarity" on the path ahead.

The delay will be a significant set back to Tony Blair and George Bush who, during their joint press conference in Washington on Friday, said the international stabilisation force should be quickly established in Lebanon and that a plan to halt hostilities was needed on an "urgent basis".

Today, the US president repeated that demand while on a trip to Florida. "A multinational force must be dispatched quickly to speed up the humanitarian aid to the Lebanese people," Mr Bush said shortly before the postponement of the UN meeting emerged.

A Downing Street spokesman, travelling with the prime minister in California, said Mr Blair was "disappointed" by the UN decision.

Israeli air force jets bombed southern Lebanon this morning, despite the 48-hour suspension of air strikes negotiated by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday after an attack that left more than 60 dead.

Today's strikes, near the village of Taibe, were carried out in support of ground forces operating in the area and did not target anything specific, the Israeli army said. Israeli troops this afternoon moved into the Aita al-Shaab area of Lebanon in a new incursion, the army said.

Israeli planes attacked targets in southern Lebanon after Hizbullah guerrillas hit an Israeli tank and injured three Israeli soldiers. Mortars were also fired at the Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona.

Israeli officials had said, in announcing the halt to air strikes, that they would suspend the cessation depending on "operational developments" in Lebanon.

In a second air strike around the port city of Tyre, Israel accidentally killed a Lebanese soldier when it hit a car that it believed was carrying a senior Hizbullah official, the Israeli army said. Lebanese security officials said the soldier was killed by a rocket strike from a pilotless drone aircraft.

The cessation was negotiated after Lebanese leaders cancelled their meetings with Ms Rice following yesterday's attack on the southern Lebanese town of Qana, which rights group Human Rights Watch today labelled a "war crime".

The 48-hour window was intended to allow civilians trapped in southern Lebanon to escape to the north of the country, away from the threat of bombardment.

Some 200 Lebanese, mostly elderly and weak, limped to safety after weeks stuck in Bint Jbail, which has seen some of the bloodiest ground fighting of the 20-day-old conflict.

Rescuers took advantage of the relative peace and began recovering bodies from the rubble of targeted areas. Lebanese Red Cross sources said 12 bodies were recovered in the village of Sreefa, nine in Zibqeen and four in Qleileh, all east of the port city of Tyre. Three other bodies were recovered in three other villages.

They said rescue workers were looking for dozens more bodies believed to be buried under the rubble in a cluster of border villages and towns bombarded by Israeli aircraft over the past three weeks.

Israel's three-week offensive in Lebanon has killed at least 578 people, mostly civilians.

The Lebanese health minister, Mohammad Khalifeh, put the number of unrecovered bodies at 200, which would take the death toll to 750 in Lebanon. Fifty-one Israelis have also been killed.

Civil defence workers were using a bulldozer to clear rubble from where around 30 civilians were believed buried under houses destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Sreefa two weeks ago.

The Taibe strike happened as Israeli troops pushed towards the village. Hizbullah rockets were fired from the border area close to Taibe this morning, landing near Kiryat Shemona.

The renewed violence called into question Ms Rice's further objective of a UN security council resolution on a ceasefire, which she hopes to achieve by the end of the week.

"This morning, as I head back to Washington, I take with me an emerging consensus on what is necessary for both an urgent ceasefire and lasting settlement. I am convinced we can achieve both this week," she told reporters in Jerusalem.