A medical personnel lines up children's bodies in body bags outside the Tyre Hospital after an Israeli air raid on Qana killed at least 54 civilians, including 37 children, in south Lebanon, yesterday. - Reuters
QANA, Lebanon (AP):
An Israeli air strike yesterday killed at least 56 Lebanese, mostly women and children, when it levelled a building where they had taken shelter. Amid widespread anger over the deadliest attack in nearly three weeks of warfare, a United States official said Israel agreed to a 48-hour halt to aerial activity over southern Lebanon.
The stunning bloodshed prompted U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cut short her Mideast mission and increased world demands on Washington to back an immediate end to the fighting.
The announcement of the pause in overflights - made by State Department spokesman Adam Ereli - appeared to reflect American pressure on Israel. Ereli said Israel has reserved the right to attack targets if it learns that attacks are being prepared against them. There was no immediate confirmation by Israeli officials.
510 death toll
The attack in the village of Qana brought Lebanon's death toll to more than 510 and pushed American peace efforts to a crucial juncture, as fury at the United States flared in Lebanon. The Beirut government said it would no longer negotiate over a U.S. peace package without an unconditional ceasefire. United Nations chief Kofi Annan sharply criticised world
leaders - implicitly Washington - for ignoring his previous calls for a stop.
In Qana, workers pulled dirt-covered bodies of young boys and girls - dressed in the shorts and T-shirts they'd been sleeping in - out of the mangled wreckage of the three-storey building. Bodies were carried in blankets
Two extended families, the Shalhoubs and the Hashems, had gathered in the house for shelter from another night of Israeli bombardment in the border area when the 1:00 a.m. strike brought the building down.
"I was so afraid. There was dirt and rocks and I couldn't see. Everything was black," said 13-year-old Noor Hashem, who survived, although her five siblings did not. She was pulled out of the ruins by her uncle, whose wife and five
children also died.
Apology
Israel apologised for the deaths but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas, saying they had fired rockets into northern Israel from near the building. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the campaign to crush Hezbollah would continue, telling Rice it could last up to two weeks more.
"We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents this morning," he told his Cabinet after the strike, according to a participant. "If necessary, it will be broadened without hesitation."
The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting to debate a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire - a step Washington has stood nearly alone at the council in refusing until the disarmament of Hezbollah is assured.
In a jab at the United States, Annan told the council in unusually frank terms that he was "deeply dismayed" his previous calls for a halt were ignored. "Action is needed now before many more children, women and men become casualties of a conflict over which they have no control," he said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who only days earlier gave his support to the U.S. stance, struck a more urgent note yesterday, saying Washington must work faster to put together the broader deal it seeks.
"We have to get this now. We have to speed this whole process up," Blair said. "This has got to stop and stop on both sides."
