Israel rejects ceasefire calls after Qana outrage

Israel rejected mounting calls for a truce in its war on Hezbollah despite global outrage over an attack that killed at least 52 civilians, but a lull in raids allowed thousands of southern Lebanese to flee to safer havens.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew back to Washington after a weekend visit to Israel overshadowed by the carnage in the south Lebanese village of 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 Qana, but its war planes were back in action Monday, 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 in Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert later said a ceasefire was possible only "when the threat over our heads is removed, when our kidnapped soldiers return to their homes and when we can live in security."

Encouraged by the temporary halt in air bombardments, however brief, 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 pickup trucks, people streamed from mountain villages toward the coastal highway leading north to Beirut.

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 search 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.

"How many babies have to die?" asked the English-language Daily Star newspaper.

Angry demonstrators took to the streets in several Arab capitals, some burning Israeli flags and denouncing the US administration for its staunch backing of Israel.

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 530, while the United Nations has said around one-third of the casualties were children. A total of 51 Israelis have been killed, most of them soldiers.

Lebanese Red Cross teams recovered 20 bodies on Monday alone, among them that of an eight-year-old child, on roads in the south of the country.

The UN Security Council met immediately after the attack on Qana to adopt a resolution which, in unusually emotional language, expressed its "extreme shock and distress" at the casualties.

But it stopped short both of condemning Israel and of calling for a ceasefire after the United States had rejected a draft describing the attack on Qana "deliberate".

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had appealed to the council to call for an immediate ceasefire, and warned Israel and Hezbollah they were both likely guilty of "grave breaches of international humanitarian law".

Arab League chief Amr Mussa voiced disappointment at the "insufficient" Security Council statement.

"It now suffers from a great trust deficit and this is a dangerous state of affairs because it is the main international tool for preserving peace and security in the world," he said.

Rice said before leaving Jerusalem that the United States would ask the Security Council to act on an "urgent and comprehensive basis" this week to forge a lasting peace.

"As I head back to Washington, I take with me an emerging consensus on what is necessary for both an urgent ceasefire and a lasting settlement," she told reporters. "I am convinced we can achieve both this week."

President George W. Bush said the United States was also working "urgently" to end the conflict, but again resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire and avoided criticism of Israel.

Efforts to put together an international buffer force at the Lebanese border, however, suffered a setback when the UN postponed a Monday meeting of potential donors of troops while details of a peace plan were hammered out by the major powers.

The devastation in Qana came a day after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed to strike cities in the centre of Israel if the Jewish state continued to attack civilians in Lebanon.

Israel had 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. Officials said residents had been warned to leave Qana, and they pinned the blame on Hezbollah for launching rockets from the village.

Israel pointed the finger at archfoe Iran, saying it pulled the strings of the Shiite militia in the escalating conflict.

"We are battling Hezbollah, which is nothing but the vanguard of the extremist regime in Tehran that finances and encourages its murderous activities," Peretz said.

Hezbollah said it had fired a missile at an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon but Israel denied the claim.

On Sunday, more than 156 rockets landed in northern Israel -- a record number for a single day -- injuring between five and 14 people. Just two fell on Monday, officials said, as Israel also reined in its offensive.

"All air operations have been suspended across all of Lebanon, mainly to allow the population of the south to evacuate the region," an Israeli army spokeswoman said, adding however that Israel reserved the right to strike Hezbollah commandos preparing attacks.

But one Lebanese soldier was killed and three wounded by Israeli naval fire near the port city of Tyre, police said, while war planes swung into action to back a ground operation near the southeastern Lebanese border village of Taibe.

And fighter jets pounded Lebanon's Masnaa border crossing with Syria for the third time in as many days, wounding four customs employees and a civilian, security sources said.

An army spokesman denied the strikes violated the suspension agreement, saying they hit "only uninhabited zones in order to prevent attacks against ground troops."

source: AFP