Israeli air strike kills 54 civilians

QANA, Lebanon (Reuters) - An Israeli air strike killed 54 civilians, including 37 children, on Sunday, prompting Lebanon to tell U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice she was unwelcome in Beirut and fuelling world pressure for a ceasefire.

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

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "deep sorrow" at the bombing, but vowed the war against Hizbollah would go on. Israel's YNet web site quoted him as telling Rice the army needed another 10 to 14 days to press its offensive.

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.

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.

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

Her mediation drive in tatters, Rice will leave for Washington on Monday to work on a U.N. resolution that could achieve what a U.S. official called a "sustainable" ceasefire.

The U.N. Security Council was to meet at 1500 GMT to discuss Lebanon at the request of Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Police said Qana, which is about 11 km (seven miles) from the border with Israel, was bombed at 1:30 a.m. (2230 GMT on Saturday), 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 defenseless women? What have they done wrong?" asked Mohamed Samai, whose relatives were among the dead.

The bodies were wrapped tightly in plastic sheets and assembled under an awning. Flowers were placed on the corpses.

Israel said it was unaware civilians were in the building and accused Hizbollah of firing rockets from Qana. About 115 rockets hit Israel on Sunday, wounding six people, police said.

A government spokeswoman said Israel took responsibility for the attack and would investigate how it happened.

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 insisted this required changing the status quo before the war, which erupted after Hizbollah guerrillas seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

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

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 -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad described it as state terrorism -- and called for an immediate ceasefire.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said 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," he told his cabinet.

Another Israeli air strike killed five civilians, including two children, in their house in the southern village of Yaroun.

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

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.

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 U.N. 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.

(Additional reporting by Beirut and Jerusalem bureaux)

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