Israel raid kills 54 civilians, Lebanon shuns Rice

QANA, Lebanon, July 30: An Israeli air strike today killed 54 Lebanese civilians, including 37 children, prompting Lebanon to tell US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice she was unwelcome in Beirut before a ceasefire.

The raid on the southern village of Qana was the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old war on Hizbollah.

As a wave of anger spread across Lebanon and the Arab world, several thousand protesters chanted ''Death to Israel, Death to America'' outside the United Nations headquarters in downtown Beirut and some smashed their way into the building.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would not hold negotiations before a ceasefire, scuppering Rice's visit.

Rice, who was in Israel and had planned to go to Beirut later in the day, said she was saddened by the Qana air raid, but stopped well short of calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Police, who gave the death toll, said the Israelis had bombed Qana at 1:30 a m (local time) destroying a three-storey building where about 63 displaced people were sheltering in the basement.

Many were killed in their sleep. ''Why have they attacked one- and two-year-old children and defenceless women? What have they done wrong?'' asked Mohamed Samai, whose relatives were among the dead.

REVENGE

Hizbollah vowed to retaliate. ''This horrific massacre will not go without a response,'' it said. The governing Palestinian movement Hamas also pledged to hit back with attacks on Israel.

Rice said it was ''time to get to a ceasefire'', but she insisted this required changing the status quo before the war, which began after Hizbollah guerrillas seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

At least 542 people have been killed in Lebanon in the war, although the Health Minister estimated the toll at 750 including unrecovered bodies. Fifty-one Israelis have also been killed.

Many Arab and European leaders condemned the Qana bombing and called for an immediate ceasefire. Siniora called UN chief Kofi Annan to demand an emergency Security Council meeting. But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet the assault in Lebanon would go on. ''We will not blink in front of Hizbollah and we will not stop the offensive despite the difficult circumstances,'' the Ynet site quoted him as saying.

Olmert told the cabinet of his ''deep sorrow'' at the civilian deaths in Qana. Political sources said he had also ordered that humanitarian aid be allowed to reach the village.

Five civilians, including two children, were killed in another Israeli air strike on a house in the southern border village of Yaroun, security sources said.

Siniora demanded an immediate, unconditional ceasefire and an international investigation into ''Israeli massacres''.

The United States says the priority is to remove the threat posed to Israel by Hizbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria.

Rice, on her second trip to the Middle East in a week, was trying to get Israel and Lebanon to agree on an international force to deploy on the border as part of a ceasefire deal.

Olmert said Israel had told Qana residents to leave before the raid and that Hizbollah had fired rockets from the village.

GRIEF AND ANGER

Distraught people in Qana screamed in grief and anger amid wrecked buildings as others scrabbled at slabs of concrete with their hands to try to reach people buried in the debris.

A woman in a red-patterned dress lay crumpled and lifeless in the broken masonry. A leg poked out from the shattered concrete nearby.

A medic carried a dead child in his arms from rubble. Other children lay dead in the street.

Israeli warplanes struck Qana only hours after Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah threatened to rocket more cities in central Israel if attacks on Lebanon continued.

Qana is already a potent symbol of Lebanese civilian deaths at the hands of the Israeli military.

In April 1996, Israeli shelling killed more than 100 civilians sheltering at the base of UN peacekeepers in the village during Israel's ''Grapes of Wrath'' bombing campaign.

Confirming a major new incursion into Lebanon, the Israeli military said tanks and troops had rolled across the border at Metula to try to find and destroy Hizbollah rocket launchers.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said at least one soldier had been wounded in fighting, in which she said Hizbollah had lost five dead.

Hizbollah reported fierce clashes.

REUTERS