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Children hit hard in Israeli strike



The Associated Press

July 30, 2006

QANA, Lebanon An Israeli airstrike killed at least 50 people - more than half of them children - in a southern Lebanese village Sunday in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting. The U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, postponed a visit to Lebanon in a setback for diplomatic efforts to end hostilities.

Infuriated Lebanese officials said they had asked Rice to postpone the visit after Israel's missile strike. But Rice said she had called Prime Minister Fuad Siniora to say she would postpone the trip, and that she had work to do in Jerusalem to end the fighting.

The missiles destroyed several houses in the village of Qana as people were sleeping. Rescue officials said at least 50 people were killed, and the bodies of 27 children were found in the rubble.

Israel said it attacked Qana because it was a base for hundreds of rockets launched at Israel, including 40 that wounded five Israelis on Sunday. Israel said it had warned civilians several days before to leave the village.

"One must understand that Hezbollah is using their own civilian population as human shields," said an Israeli Foreign Ministry official, Gideon Meir. "The Israeli defense forces dropped leaflets and warned the civilian population to leave the place because the Hezbollah turned it into a war zone."

Rescuers aided by villagers dug through the rubble by hand. At least 20 bodies wrapped in white sheets were taken away, including 10 children. A row of houses lay in ruins and an old woman was carried away on a plastic chair.

Villagers said many of the dead were from four families that had taken refuge on the ground floor of a three- story building, believing they would be safe from bombings.

"We want this to stop!" shouted Mohammed Ismail, a middle-aged man pulling away at the rubble in search for bodies, his brown pants covered in dust. "May God have mercy on the children. They came here to escape the fighting."

"They are hitting children to bring the fighters to their knees," he said.

Rice said she was "deeply saddened by the terrible loss of innocent life" in Israel's attack. But she did not call for an immediate cease-fire.

"We all recognize this kind of warfare is extremely difficult," Rice said, noting that it came in areas where civilians lived. "It unfortunately has awful consequences sometimes."

"We want a cease-fire as soon as possible," she added.

At least 750 people have been killed, most of them civilians, and more than 2,000 have been wounded in Lebanon since Israel began its air, sea and land assault July 12, Health Minister Mohammed Khalifeh told Agence France- Presse on Sunday.

The United States and Israel are pressing for a settlement that disables Hezbollah and addresses enduring issues between Lebanon and Israel - not the quick truce favored by most world leaders.

Siniora said Lebanon would be open only to an immediate cease-fire.

"There is no place at this sad moment for any discussions other than an immediate and unconditional cease- fire as well as international investigation of the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," he told reporters Sunday.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Israel would not rush into a cease-fire until it achieved its goal of decimating Hezbollah, whose July 12 capture of two Israel soldiers provoked the fighting.

More than 5,000 people protested in Beirut, denouncing Israel and the United States, some chanting, "Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv." A few broke car windows and tried briefly to break into the main UN building until political leaders called for a halt to the damage.

The Lebanese defense minister, Elias Murr, questioned Israel's claim that Hezbollah fired rockets from the village.

"What do you expect Israel to say? Will it say that it killed 40 children and women?" he told Al Jazeera television.

The attack Sunday drew swift condemnation from several world leaders.

The office of President Jacques Chirac said "France condemns this unjustifiable action, which shows more than ever the need to move toward an immediate cease-fire, without which other such dramas can only be repeated."

Jordan's King Abdullah II condemned "the ugly crime perpetrated by Israeli forces in Qana," calling it "a blatant violation of the law and all international conventions."

Fighting also broke out between guerrillas and Israeli soldiers in a zone called the Taibeh Project area, about three kilometers, or two miles, inside Lebanon. The Israeli Army said one soldier was moderately wounded.

Hezbollah's Al Manar television claimed that two Israeli soldiers had been killed.

Heavy artillery rained down on the villages of Yuhmor and Arnoun, close to Taibeh. In northern Israel, rockets fell on Nahariya, Kiryat Shemona and an area close to Maalot, the army said.

Israel has said it will launch a series of limited ground incursions into Lebanon to push back guerrillas, rather than carry out a full-fledged invasion. Israeli troops pulled back Saturday from the town of Bint Jbail.

But Lebanese officials reported a massing of troops and 12 tanks near the Israeli town of Metulla further to the northeast, on the tip of the Galilee Panhandle near the Golan Heights, suggesting another incursion could begin soon.

"I think it needs to be clear that Israel is not in a hurry to have a cease-fire before we reach a situation in which we can say that we achieved the central goals that we set down for ourselves," Olmert said Sunday before his weekly cabinet meeting.

France circulated a draft Security Council resolution Saturday among the other 14 council members. It would call for an immediate halt to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and seek a wide new buffer zone in southern Lebanon monitored by international forces and the Lebanese Army.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett of Britain said the strike on Qana was a "tragedy for the people affected," especially because negotiators had been close to reaching "the basis for a cease-fire."

She said the UN resolution was no longer on track to being reached by Monday or Tuesday. "We need to go back and pick up the pieces," Beckett told Sky News.

But she stopped short of calling for a cease-fire. "We have repeatedly called on the Israelis to act proportionately," Beckett said.

A peace package Rice brought to the region called for a UN-mandated multinational force that could help stabilize the region, according to a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

It also proposes disarming Hezbollah and integrating the guerrilla force into the Lebanese Army; Hezbollah's return of Israeli prisoners; a buffer zone in southern Lebanon to put Hezbollah rockets out of range of Israel; a commitment to resolve the status of a piece of land held by Israel and claimed by Lebanon; and the creation of an international reconstruction plan for Lebanon.

The latter two provisions resembled parts of a proposal by Lebanon's government. But they fell short of Hezbollah's demands, including a prisoner swap to free Lebanese held for years in Israeli prisons.


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