Shock Over Civilian Deaths from Israeli Attack

The raid on the southern village of Qana was the deadliest single strike since the Jewish state unleashed its war on Hezbollah 19 days ago. It killed more than 50 people, including 37 children.

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

Rescue workers with only their bare hands clawed through rubble of flattened homes to find survivors from the raid on Qana, launched just as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was back in the region pursuing a new round of diplomacy to try to end the conflict.

"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."

The army also rejected any responsibility for the civilian deaths in Qana, saying Hezbollah used the village as a base to launch rockets, and that residents had already been ordered to leave.

The village, said by some to be where Jesus turned water into wine, is also 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.

Rice confirmed she had cancelled plans to go to Beirut Sunday after the attack. She told reporters in Jerusalem she was "deeply saddened" by the deaths.

UN headquarters stormed

Angry protestors attacked and broke into the United Nations headquarters in Beirut on Sunday after the Israeli raids on Qana.

The demonstrators hurled stones at the building and smashed windows with rocks and iron bars before penetrating the building from the main door, they said. The protestors burned curtains and destroyed furniture inside the building, they said.

"Feltman out now!" they shouted in unison, in reference to US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. A UN employee told AFP that the UN staff in the building had sought refuge in an underground basement.

European Reaction

Reactions poured in from Europe as news of the civilian deaths become known.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Sunday's events showed again that "the highest priority must now be a ceasefire as quickly as possible." Steinmeier said in a statement that he had "learned with horror" of the deaths of civilians.

French President Jacques Chirac strongly denounced the bombardment of the village.

"France condemns this unjustifiable action which shows more than ever the need to agree on an immediate ceasefire, without which these kind of tragedies will only be repeated," Chirac said in a statement.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told Sky News that the incident was a tragedy and a setback for any peace deal.

"It's absolutely dreadful, it's quite appalling. Undoubtedly today's events will make things worse at least in the short term," she said in the Sunday interview, although she stopped short of calling for a ceasefire. "We have repeatedly called on the Israelis to act proportionately."

European Commission spokeswoman Katharina Von Schnurbein said: "The Commission has repeatedly requested that both parties come to a ceasefire as soon as possible and that under all circumstances both parties should stick to humanitarian norms and international law,"

From his summer residence north of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI appealed for an immediate ceasefire to end a crisis he described as "ever more tragic."

"In the name of God, I call on all those responsible for this spiral of violence so that weapons are immediately laid down on all sides," he told the faithful from his summer residence north of Rome.

Threats of escalation

The attacks came after defiant Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to strike cities in the center of the country if the Jewish state continued to attack civilians in Lebanon.

Hamas, the Palestinian ruling Islamist movement, warned Sunday that "all options were open" against Israel after the raid.

Israel, backed by the United States, 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.

In a televised speech apparently timed to coincide with Rice's arrival, Nasrallah accused the top US diplomat of returning to the region just to impose "conditions" on Lebanon as part of plans to create a new Middle East order.

UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland had appealed for a truce to allow casualties to be removed and food and medicine to be sent into the war zone, saying one third of the casualties were children.

But an Israeli foreign ministry official said a ceasefire was unacceptable because Hezbollah "would exploit it to gather civilians to use them as a human shield in the combat zone".

Bush and Blair

US President George W. Bush stressed in his weekly radio address 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."

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 back home about the use of a Scottish airport by US jets carrying weapons bound for Israel.