The report, citing the Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon, said that the government is offering some 17,000 residents of northern border towns to leave for several days.

Maimon said that the residents were offered to leave the war zone for several days of recuperation. The Israeli government will pay for the stay of those leaving the border area.

The municipality of Kiryat Shmona, a northern Israeli town about 10 kms from the Israeli-Lebanese border, decided Monday that hundreds of the town's residents would evacuate this week for other parts of the country.

On Tuesday, the municipality will compile lists of people set to leave, most of them senior citizens, handicapped and women who have not left their bomb shelters since fighting broke out last month.

They are expected to leave the town on Wednesday. The director general of the Israeli Prime Minister's Office will determine where the Kiryat Shmona residents will go.

On Monday alone, over 160 Katyushas were fired by the Lebanese Hezbollah at northern Israeli communities. About 70 of them landed in and around Kiryat Shmona, with the remainder falling on Rosh Pina, Safed, Ma'alot and Acre.

The latest death brought to at least 900 the number of people killed in Lebanon and over 90 people have been killed in Israel, as the Israel-Hezbollah conflict entered its 28th day on Tuesday.