Afterwards AFP quoted Israeli police as saying more than 80 rockets had struck northern Israel within the space of an hour Wednesday morning, causing no casualties, after a two-day lull in the firing from Lebanon.
Israeli chief of staff Dan Halutz later said Israel had captured five Hezbollah fighters in Baalbek, but Hezbollah said that it had foiled the Israeli landing at Baalbek.
"The Islamic Resistance confirms that the citizens kidnapped in Baalbek are normal civilians," Hezbollah's television station Al-Manar said.
But an Israeli military spokeswoman quoted by AFP said: "During a helicopter-borne operation launched by an Israeli unit in the town of Baalbek several members of Hezbollah were hit while others have been taken prisoner and brought back to Israel.”
She said all the Israeli troops involved in the raid on the Hezbollah bastion near the Syrian border had returned to their base, while Reuters reported that none of the Israeli troops were injured.
The spokeswoman gave no details on the numbers of Hezbollah casualties, but Lebanese police quoted later by AFP said eleven people, including a Syrian national, were killed and five Lebanese were kidnapped during the overnight raid by Israeli forces on Baalbek.
Reuters later reported that Israeli commandos had snatched at least three low-ranking Hezbollah members in the raid, which Reuters said had killed at least seven civilians.
A police source did not specify to AFP whether civilians or Hezbollah guerrillas were killed in the attacks, which were in support of what the Israeli military said was a raid by special forces.
Lebanese police sources earlier said Israeli troops had raided a hospital near Baalbek and had met heavy resistance from Hezbollah gunmen.
Reuters reported that at least five members of the same family were killed when warplanes bombed the nearby village of Jammaliyeh during the fighting.
Two others were found dead in the rubble of another house, the sources said.
Israel's security cabinet has also ordered a ground sweep 6-7km into Lebanon, a political source said.
It is the most northern ground attack by Israeli forces since the start of the crisis on July 12, and came as regular Israeli army units stepped up operations in southern Lebanon aimed at dismantling Hezbollah positions.
A spokesman for the Shiite militia said that the Israeli special forces were surrounded in the hospital, while local residents described heavy fighting and many civilian casualties.
The Hezbollah spokesman said the Israelis had entered the Dar Al-Hikmeh hospital, which is run by the militant outfit, about two kilometres southwest of Baalbek.
He said all patients had been evacuated from the hospital on July 12.
Residents told AFP they saw the Israeli forces land shortly after midnight and open fire, following an intense air bombardment of the area.
The chief Hezbollah spokesman, Rahal, later told Associated Press that the Israeli commandos landed at the hospital by helicopter and were trapped inside the hospital, fighting fierce clashes with guerrilla fighters who surrounded the medical centre.
Rahal dismissed as "untrue" reports that the Israeli commandos managed to snatch some patients from the hospital and spirit them away in helicopters.
Israeli warplanes attacked at least five suspected Hezbollah positions near Baalbek just three hours before the official end of a two-day pause in the air war.
Gunships also flew at low altitude while combing the road linking Baalbek to the Syrian city of Homs, attacking and setting fire to three service stations.
The aircraft had zoomed over northern Lebanon before diving over the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country where they staged 12 raids on the region of Baalbek, firing at least 24 rockets.
Witnesses said Israeli helicopters also attacked a target 15 kilometres west of Baalbek, starting a huge fire.
Reuters reported that Israeli aircraft also destroyed at least three bridges in the northern tip of the Bekaa and in northern Lebanon.
Baalbek, an ancient city with spectacular Roman ruins, was a former Syrian army headquarters and included the barracks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards when they trained Hezbollah guerrillas there in the 1980s.
Sidon attack
Police and army sources say three Lebanese army soldiers were killed in an Israeli bombardment on a large military base near the southern port city of Sidon.
Israeli warplanes fired missiles on the Sarba position, east of Sidon, they said.
A Hezbollah statement said the guerrillas had attacked an Israeli army armoured unit that crossed into Lebanon, destroying two tanks and leaving their crews dead or wounded.
The statement said the fight began when an armoured unit attempted to advance on the Rub Thalatheen hill at Adaisseh, a border village on the central sector of the frontier.
Meanwhile Israel confirmed the deaths of three of its soldiers in clashes with Hezbollah guerrillas in the southern Lebanese border village of Aita al-Shaab on Tuesday.
Twenty-five other soldiers were wounded by anti-tank rockets and automatic weapon fire, an army spokeswoman said without giving further details.
Al-Arabiya television had reported the deaths earlier in the day.
For its part, Israeli public radio said the dead included an officer and two enlisted men. It added that at least five Hezbollah fighters had also been killed, and that dozens more were still engaged in clashes with Israeli forces.
Fuel shortage
United Nations officials are working urgently to persuade Israel to give safe passage to supply ships before Lebanon runs out of fuel in the next two or three days.
The lack of fuel and precarious security is preventing many UN-organised convoys from reaching victims of the war in Lebanon which has left more than 820 dead in the past three weeks.
The UN special representative on children and armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said that an estimated 177 children have been killed and 1,000 injured in Lebanon.
But it was also emphasised that children have also been killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel.
"The guns must stop firing," Ms Coomaraswamy said, "to give all parties time to reflect on the impact of this war on children."
According to another UN official there is an "acute fuel crisis" in Lebanon with only two-three days of supplies left in the country. Aid workers also report that three hospitals in southern Lebanon have closed because of the lack of fuel.
UN officials hope that in the next 24 hours they will be able to supply Lebanon with fuel and have representatives in Jerusalem trying to get safe passage clearances from Israel for fuel ships to travel to Beirut.
"The conditions are treacherous," said Ahmad Fawzi, a UN information service director.
"We are not getting security clearances for our convoys to go through," Mr Fawzi told a press briefing at the UN headquarters. On Tuesday, only one food convoy was able to leave Beirut out of a three that were planned to head to the south.
"The World Food Programme is increasingly frustrated at the decision of the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) to allow only one of the three humanitarian convoys," Mr Fawzi said.
Road conditions have also deteriorated. The trip from Beirut to Tyre in the south, which normally takes about one hour, now takes eight hours, Mr Fawzi quoted UN aid experts as saying.
The UN said it had made an emergency appeal for 150 million dollars for aid for Lebanon but that only 25 million dollars have been received so far.