TYRE, Lebanon (AP) -- Hezbollah launched a new kind of rocket Friday that made the deepest strike into Israel yet, rattling Israelis as their warplanes and artillery targeted guerrillas in attacks on apartment buildings and roads.

Lebanese officials said about 12 civilians died in the day's fighting; Israel said it killed 26 militants, raising to about 230 the total number killed in the campaign.

Hezbollah's launching of the new weapon unnerved Israelis, 500,000 of whom are already living in northern shelters because of rocket bombardments. The rocket firing was also likely to escalate a conflict now in its 18th day, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heading back to the Middle East this weekend to make a second attempt to resolve the crisis.

The guerrillas said they used the Khaibar-1 — named after the site of a historic battle between Islam's Prophet Muhammad and Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula — to strike the Israeli town of Afula.

"With this, the Islamic Resistance begins a new stage of fighting, challenge and confrontation with a strong determination and full belief in God's victory," Hezbollah said in a statement.

Five of the rockets crashed into empty fields outside Afula, causing no injuries. Still, Israel deployed a Patriot interceptor missile battery north of Tel Aviv, believing the area could be in range of Hezbollah's barrages.

Hundreds of Katyushas have hit northern Israel in the current fighting, including 96 on Friday, one of which hit a hospital. The Afula strike came two days after Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah vowed his guerrillas would fire rockets beyond Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, which has been hit repeatedly in the conflict.

A top UN peacekeeping official said he thought the war could continue until the end of August and voiced fears Israel would flatten Lebanon's southern villages and destroy the port of Tyre "neighborhood by neighborhood" if Hezbollah rockets keep slamming into the Jewish state.

At UN peacekeeping headquarters in Naqoura, barely a stone's throw from Israel, political affairs officer Ryszard Morczynski said Tyre would become a target of intense Israeli attacks because Hezbollah was firing rockets from the city's suburbs into Haifa.

Although possessing overwhelming firepower, Israel has made no threats to destroy Lebanese cities and villages. Israel has stressed that it is not fighting the Lebanese people or government, but will go after Hezbollah wherever it finds the militants.

Rice's second trip to the region comes as diplomatic efforts are solidifying into two sharply divided camps. Most agree on the idea of bringing international forces into the south to end Hezbollah's decade-long free rein here — but still unresolved is how and when.

In Washington, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said they want an international force dispatched quickly to southern Lebanon. But they said any plan to end the fighting must address the long-term issue of disarming Hezbollah. "This is a moment of intense conflict in the Middle East," Bush said. "Yet our aim is to turn it into a moment of opportunity and a chance for broader change in the region."