Naharnet Newsdesk - Midday Roundup: Israel Unleashes its Rage on Civilians, Commits Massacre in Qana

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Midday Roundup: Israel Unleashes its Rage on Civilians, Commits Massacre in Qana

Mothers embraced their dead children in shock Sunday as rescue workers tackled the rubble and dust of buildings flattened by Israeli bombing raids on the southern village of Qana that killed at least 55 people.
Prime Minister Fouad Saniora denounced Israel's "war crime", vowing there was no place for talks until Israel ceased its attacks.

"There is no place on this sad morning for any discussion other than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as an international investigation into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," Saniora said at a press conference.

Israel's Qana massacre sparked protests in Beirut and forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel an expected visit Sunday with Saniora.

"In the wake of the tragedy that the people and the government of Lebanon are dealing with today, I have decided to postpone my discussion in Beirut," Rice said.

Thousands of demonstrators flocked to downtown Beirut to join angry protestors, who broke into the UN headquarters where they burned curtains and destroyed furniture following the massacre.

Rescue workers using only their bare hands searched through piles of debris while distraught women joined in to retrieve the bodies and take them away.

Among the buildings hit in the two hours of raids on the southern village of Qana was a shelter where dozens had fled to escape Israeli bombardment of areas thought to be even more exposed.

"After the bombardment there was dust everywhere. We couldn't see anything. I succeeded in getting out and everything collapsed. I have several members of the family inside and I do not think there will be any other survivors," said a distraught Ibrahim Shalhoub, 26.

"The bombing was so intense that no-one could move. Rescue efforts could only start this morning," said the man, one of just five people believed to have survived the strike on the shelter.

The bodies of 37 children were among those recovered from under the rubble of dozens of a building which collapsed after the bombardment, said Salam Daher, the civil defense chief in the region.

"I retrieved my son and my husband, Sheikh Mohamad, who were wounded. But when I came back to get my daughter who had stayed in the shelter, it was too late because the building had crumpled," cried a woman identified as Rahba.

Terrified mothers held up and then embraced the bodies of their dead children, still wearing the pajamas they had gone to sleep in. The bodies were covered in dust.

In Israel, the military rejected responsibility for civilian deaths in Qana, saying that Hizbullah was to blame for using the village as a rocket-launching site.

"The Hizbullah used the village of Qana as a base to launch rockets and it bears responsibility that this area is a combat zone," army spokesman Jacob Dalal told AFP, adding that the army had dropped leaflets several days before warning civilians to leave the area.

A day earlier, warplanes struck outside the market town of Nabatiyeh, crushing a house and killing a woman, her five children, and a man in a nearby house, Lebanese security officials said. In the southern port city of Tyre, volunteers buried 31 victims of the bombardment in a mass grave, among them a 1-day-old girl.

Qana was the site of an Israeli bombing of a United Nations base on April 18, 1996 that killed 105 people who had taken refuge there during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive -- also aimed at wiping out Hizbullah.

Ten years later tragedy has returned to Qana.

"There was a first bombardment at 1:00 am (2200 GMT Saturday)," said resident Ghazi Aaidibi. "A few people went out of the shelter and about 10 minutes later a second bombardment destroyed it. There were 63 people inside, from the Shalhub and Hashem families."

Rescue operations had to stop in the morning over fears that the final storey of the building was about to collapse.

And as the recovery efforts continued, Israeli jets continued to launch sporadic raids around the outskirts of Qana.

Sunday's blistering air assault on the village came as Israeli forces made a new ground incursion into Lebanon and were engaged in fierce battles with Hizbullah fighters in the southeastern border area, Lebanese police said.

Clashes were raging on the outskirts of the village of Taibe, a few kilometers (miles) to the west of Fatima gate, a sealed border crossing into Israel, they said.

A Hizbullah statement said its fighters were engaged in "fierce confrontations" with Israeli forces who had moved into the Taibe region.

The Israeli army said rockets fell Sunday on the northern Israeli towns of Nahariya, Kiryat Shemona and an area close to Maalot. The rockets mostly fell in open areas, and no injuries were reported. Hizbullah said it had shelled Israeli outposts long the border.

Meanwhile Lebanon's main international border crossing was closed, a day after Israeli warplanes targeted the road to Syria, further increasing the country's isolation, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

Heavy bombs had gouged out large craters on the road leading to the Syrian border at Masnaa in eastern Lebanon, he said.(AFP-AP)(AP photo shows a Red Cross paramedic carrying the body of child recovered from the rubble of a demolished building in Qana)

Beirut, 30 Jul 06, 11:31


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