Israeli warplanes bomb Lebanon village, 54 killed

QANA: At least 54 people were killed, including 37 children, in an Israeli air blitz on the Lebanese village of Qana on Sunday, triggering outrage across the region and warnings of retribution for Israel's "war crime."   The strike, at 1:30 a.m. (2230 GMT), destroyed a three-storey building where about 63 people were sheltering in its basement.

 

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose Middle East mission has been thrown into turmoil by the attack, she was "deeply saddened" by the loss of innocent lives and said it was time to "get to a ceasefire" in Lebanon but stopped short of calling for an immediate halt to hostilities.             

 

The raid on Qana, which left homes in ruins and villagers trapped under the rubble, was the deadliest single attack since Israel launched its devastating war on Hezbollah 19 days ago.      

 

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the attack as a "war crime," demanding an immediate ceasefire in a conflict that has now killed more than 500 people and left a trail of destruction across the country.            

 

In Beirut, a mob of angry demonstrators smashed into the UN building as thousands took to the streets in protest while the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah and the ruling Palestinian Islamist militant movement Hamas both vowed revenge.            

 

"This horrible massacre, like the others, will not remain unpunished," Hezbollah said.        

 

In Qana -- scene of another deadly bombardment 10 years ago -- rescue workers with only their bare hands clawed through rubble of flattened homes and an underground shelter to find survivors while mothers hugged their dead children in a final hopeless embrace.   

 

"At least 51 people were killed. They include 22 children," said Salam Daher, the local civil defense chief.            

 

"The bombing was so intense that no-one could move," said a distraught Ibrahim Shalhoub, 26. "I succeeded in getting out and everything collapsed. I have several members of the family inside and I do not think that there will be any other survivors."           

 

Israel, which has received staunch US backing since the conflict began on July 12, unleashed its firepower on Qana after flatly rejecting a UN call for a 72-hour truce to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Lebanon.            

 

Siniora ruled out any talks on finding an end to the conflict until there was an immediate halt to Israel's offensive, signalling the likely failure of Rice's efforts to win support on both sides for the deployment of an international force in Lebanon.            

 

"There is no place on this sad morning for any discussion other than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as an international investigation into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," he told reporters.    

 

Rice, on her second trip to the region in less than a week, refrained again from calling for an immediate truce after talks in Israel and a trip to Lebanon was cancelled.         

 

"I think what it is time to do is get to a ceasefire, we actually have to put one in place," she said. "We want a ceasefire as soon as possible, I would have wanted a ceasefire yesterday if possible, but the parties have to agree to a ceasefire and there have to be certain conditions in place."        

 

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated that Israel was in "no rush" to reach a ceasefire.     

The army, while voicing "regret" for the civilian deaths, pinned the blame on Hezbollah, saying it used the village as a base to launch rockets, and that residents had already been ordered to leave. But reaction was fierce across the Arab world, and even Britain, Washington's closest ally, condemned the Qana attack as "quite appalling."              

 

The village, said by some to be where Jesus turned water into wine, was the site of an Israeli bombing of a UN base in April 1996 that killed 105 people during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive -- also aimed at wiping out Hezbollah.     

 

Dozens of other villages around the southern port city of Tyre were also bombarded with fire from the Israeli navy, air force and artillery. Israeli planes also tore up the Masnaa border crossing into Syria, leading to the closure of the main Damascus-Beirut route.       

 

Israeli ground troops also launched a new cross-border incursion and were engaged in fierce battles with Hezbollah guerrillas on the outskirts of the southeastern village of Taibe. About 30 rockets fired from south Lebanon also landed across towns in northern Israel, without causing any injuries, police said.   

 

The attacks came after defiant Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to strike cities in the centre of Israel if the Jewish state continued to attack civilians in Lebanon. Israel has refused to set a date for ending its war on the Shiite Muslim group that has made hundreds of thousands homeless and destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure.              

 

Israel has mobilised thousands of army reservists and says it plans to create a narrow buffer zone in Lebanon until the mooted international force is deployed.    

 

Israel has lost a total of 51 people since the conflict erupted, many of them soldiers killed in combat. Last week it lost nine soldiers in fighting around the key border town of Bint Jbeil in its biggest single-day death toll of the conflict, facing tougher-than-expected resistance despite its military superiority.   

 

On Friday the Israeli military claimed to have hit a launch pad it suspected was used to fire a new type of missile that hit Afula, 50 kilometres (35 miles) south of the border, the deepest strike into Israel since the warring began.            

 

US President George W. Bush had stressed in his weekly radio address Saturday that "militias in Lebanon must be disarmed, the flow of illegal arms must be halted, and the Lebanese security services should deploy throughout the country".              

 

He said that during his meetings with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Washington Friday they agreed that a "robust multinational force must be dispatched to Lebanon quickly".         

 

Bush and Blair did not call for an immediate ceasefire, and warned Israel's archfoes Syria and Iran -- supporters of Hezbollah -- that they must become "proper and responsible members of the international community" or face "the risk of increasing confrontation".            

 

Blair said world powers would meet at the UN Monday to discuss the possible deployment of a multinational force. But Syria said it would simply be an "occupation force" that served Israel's interests.   

 

The British leader defended his siding with Bush on the Lebanese crisis, and brushed off mounting protests at home about the use of a Scottish airport by US jets carrying weapons bound for Israel.    

 

Two Indian UN peacekeepers were wounded on Saturday in an Israeli air raid on their post in south Lebanon. Four UN military observers were killed last week in an Israeli strike on their observation post.        

 

With 800,000 Lebanese displaced by the fighting, the International Committee of the Red Cross has criticised the "unacceptable" humanitarian situation and said Israel had to do much more to spare civilians.