BEIRUT, April 9 (Reuters) - Lebanon has spent the last 24 hours advocating for a temporary ceasefire to allow for broader talks with Israel, a senior Lebanese official told Reuters, saying it would be a "separate track but the same model" as a fragile truce brokered by Pakistan between the U.S. and Iran.

The official said no date or location had been set yet but Lebanon needed the U.S. as a mediator and guarantor of any agreement.

April 9 (Reuters) - Dozens of states issued a joint statement at the United Nations on Thursday condemning "unacceptable aggressive behavior" toward U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon and calling for increased protections after the deaths there of three Indonesian soldiers.

The 63 countries and the European Union also expressed "deep concern over the humanitarian situation in Lebanon, especially the significant civilian casualties, the extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure and the mass displacement of more than one million people."

JERUSALEM, April 9 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he has given an instruction for Israel to begin peace talks with Lebanon that would also include the disarming of Hezbollah.

"In light of Lebanon's repeated requests to open direct negotiations with Israel, I instructed the cabinet yesterday to start direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible," Netanyahu said in a statement. "The negotiations will focus on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon."

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta

CAIRO/TAYASIR, West Bank, April 9 (Reuters) - Israel has approved the establishment of dozens of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, an Israeli watchdog group said on Thursday, amid a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians across the occupied territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has not formally announced the establishment of the 34 new settlements, many of them outposts in far-flung areas of the mountainous territory, the Peace Now watchdog group said in a statement.

LONDON, April 9 (Reuters) - Imposing a toll on ships sailing through the critical Strait of Hormuz would "set a dangerous precedent" and countries should not impede freedom of navigation, the UN's shipping agency said on Thursday.

Iranian officials have raised the idea of charging a toll for using the Strait after a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Tehran was agreed this week.

By Stine Jacobsen

COPENHAGEN, April 9 (Reuters) - Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said on Thursday that he represents a proud nation seeking to maintain global order, pushing back against the latest comments about the Arctic island by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump on Wednesday vented his frustration with NATO as relations reached a crisis point over the Iran war, stating that the military alliance was not around when needed, and that he still remembered Greenland, a "BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE".

VIENNA, April 9 (Reuters) - Austria's foreign ministry on Thursday called on Israel to stop attacking civilian targets in Lebanon, and said the Austrian members of a U.N. peacekeeping force there must be protected.

Austria has in recent years been one of Israel's staunchest political supporters in the European Union.

"Israel must immediately stop its military operations against civilian targets and infrastructure in Lebanon," the ministry said in response to a question from Reuters.

By Emilie Madi and Maya Gebeily

BEIRUT, April 9 (Reuters) - Ambulances arriving at a Beirut hospital on Thursday bypassed the emergency room and drove straight to the morgue, where exhausted medics unloaded a succession of bags of body parts for relatives to identify before burial.

BERLIN, April 9 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday he did not want U.S.-Iran war to place any further strain on relations between the United States and its European NATO partners.

"We do not want – I do not want – NATO to split. NATO is a guarantor of our security, including and above all in Europe," he said, speaking to journalists.

He added he had encouraged U.S. President Donald Trump in a call to pursue negotiations with Iran with urgency.

Germany was resuming direct talks with Iranian leadership in Tehran, Merz said in Berlin.

By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA, April 9 (Reuters) - Some of Lebanon's hospitals could run out of life-saving trauma medical kits within days as supplies near depletion following mass casualties from large-scale Israeli strikes over the past day, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

The life-saving trauma kits include bandages, antibiotics and anaesthetics to treat patients who sustained war-related injuries, the WHO stated.