Israel suspends bombing after deadly Lebanon raid

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel suspended air strikes on southern Lebanon on Monday for 48 hours after a raid killed at least 54 civilians, mostly children, and triggered worldwide demands for a truce in the Jewish state's war against Hizbollah.

Washington pressed for the suspension and many world leaders condemned Sunday's bombing, the deadliest single attack in Israel's nearly three-week war against the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla group. Thirty-seven children were killed.

The attack on the village of Qana prompted Lebanon's government to call off scheduled talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and tell her she was unwelcome before a ceasefire was in place.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Israel's decision to suspend air strikes would allow for an investigation into the attack, which occurred at a time of already heightened global alarm at the hundreds of civilian casualties in the war.

Israel would also coordinate with the United Nations to allow a 24-hour window for residents in southern Lebanon to leave the area if they wished, Ereli told reporters in Jerusalem where he was accompanying Rice on a trip.

The announcement of the suspension of air strikes was made after Rice held talks throughout Sunday with Israeli leaders.

Rescue workers called off the search in Qana for bodies or survivors after hours of digging through the rubble with their hands, lifting out the twisted, dust-caked corpses of children.

A Lebanese Foreign Ministry official told an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council that more than 60 people were killed. But police in Lebanon put the death toll at 54.

The 15-nation Security Council unanimously adopted a statement expressing "extreme shock and distress" at the Qana killings. The statement did not call for an immediate truce, a measure opposed by the United States, but said the council would work "for a lasting settlement of the crisis."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had urged the council to call for an immediate end to the fighting. "I am deeply dismayed that my earlier calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities were not heeded," said Annan.

U.S. STANCE

Rice expressed sadness over Qana but stopped short of calling for an immediate truce. President Bush, blaming Hizbollah and its main allies Syria and Iran for the war, says the root causes of the conflict must be tackled before there can be lasting peace.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who ordered his forces into combat on July 12 when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, voiced "deep sorrow" at the Qana killings but vowed the war against Hizbollah would go on.

At least 545 people have been killed in Lebanon, although the health minister estimated the toll at 750 including unrecovered bodies. Fifty-one Israelis have been killed.

Hizbollah fired more than 140 rockets at Israel on Sunday, wounding six people, Israeli police said.

Ereli said while Israel had suspended air raids on southern eLebanonbanon the Jewish state had the right to "take action against targets preparing attacks against it," a restatement of U.S. policy that Israel has the right to defend itself.

The goal of the suspension was to improve the flow of humanitarian aid to south Lebanon, said Ereli.

"The United States welcomes this decision and hopes that it will help to relieve the suffering of families and children in south Lebanon," he said.

Rice will leave Israel for Washington on Monday to work on a U.N. resolution that could achieve what the White House called a "sustainable" ceasefire that changes the pre-war status quo.

The United States, Israel's chief ally, says the priority is to remove the threat that Hizbollah poses to the Jewish state.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, often at odds with Hizbollah, on Sunday thanked its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and "all those who sacrifice their lives for the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon."

Qana is already a potent symbol of Lebanese civilian deaths at Israeli hands. In April 1996, Israeli shelling killed more than 100 civilians sheltering at the base of U.N. peacekeepers in Qana during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" bombing campaign.

International outrage over that attack helped force Israel to end a 17-day campaign that killed more than 200 Lebanese.

Sunday's attack flattened a three-storey building where more than 60 people were in the basement. Many were killed as they slept. Israel said it was unaware civilians were in the building and accused Hizbollah of firing rockets from Qana.

Hizbollah vowed to retaliate, and the governing Palestinian movement Hamas also pledged to hit back with attacks on Israel.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem, U.N. bureaux)

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