Israel rejects ceasefire calls after Qana outrage

JERUSALEM: Israel on Monday rejected mounting pressure for a truce in its 20-day-old war on Hezbollah despite global outrage over a raid on a village that killed at least 52 Lebanese, mainly women and children.         

 

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew back to Washington after a weekend visit to Israel overshadowed by the carnage in Qana, saying she was convinced that "an urgent ceasefire and a lasting settlement" could be achieved this week.              

 

But as Lebanon was plunged into mourning over the biggest single loss of life since Israel unleashed its war machine against its northern neighbor on July 12, the Jewish state warned it would widen its offensive on Hezbollah.          

 

Israel had agreed to halt air strikes for 48 hours pending an investigation into Sunday's attack on the village of Qana, but its war planes were back in action near a Lebanese border town where fighting erupted at the weekend, and a Lebanese soldier was killed in a gunboat attack.      

 

"If there is an immediate ceasefire, the extremists will immediately rear their heads," Defence Minister Amir Peretz told a stormy parliament session.           

 

Qana, where Jesus is said to have turned water into wine, achieved martyr status after an Israeli attack on a UN base there in 1996 killed 105 people, and the new raid prompted an outpouring of anger around the world.              

 

Lebanese police said the dead included 30 children, killed in their beds in night-time air raids which left homes in ruins and villagers trapped beneath the rubble. An MP said 15 of the children had been disabled.    

 

Rescue teams were preparing to continue the hunt for bodies still under the ruins of a shelter levelled by Israel forces as personal possessions, bags, and clothes of the dead, were piled up outside.         

 

"We will continue on Monday with clearing up the ruins in the hope of taking out more corpses, as families have told us that there are more missing people," local civil defence chief Salam Daher said.           

 

Flags flew at half-mast throughout Lebanon and banks and public institutions were closed in memory of the victims of what one Beirut newspaper charged was "butchery."    

 

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the Qana carnage as a "war crime," while the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah vowed that "this horrible massacre... will not remain unpunished."             

 

Large pictures of dead children being retrieved from under the rubble were splashed across newspapers in Lebanon and across the Arab world, some framed in heavy black borders topped with blood-red headlines.     

 

Lebanon says 750 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli offensive, which has also displaced hundreds of thousands and laid waste to much of the country's infrastructure. An AFP count has put the death toll at 518, while the United Nations has said around one-third of the casualties were children. A total of 51 Israelis have been killed, the majority of them soldiers.             

 

Encouraged by the temporary halt in air bombardments, tens of thousands of villagers fled southern Lebanon, the Hezbollah heartland which has borne the brunt of the onslaught. Carrying piles of luggage, mattresses and blankets on car rooftops or pick-up trucks, people streamed from various mountain villages toward the coastal highway leading north to Beirut.