Israel rejects ceasefire calls after Qana outrage

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew back to Washington after a weekend visit to Israel overshadowed by the carnage in the south Lebanese village of Qana, saying she was convinced that "an urgent ceasefire and a lasting settlement" could be achieved this week.

But as Lebanon was plunged into mourning over the biggest single loss of life since Israel unleashed its war machine against its northern neighbor on July 12, the Jewish state warned it would widen its offensive against Hezbollah.

Israel had agreed to halt air strikes for 48 hours pending an investigation into Sunday's attack on Qana, but its warplanes were back in action Monday, and a Lebanese soldier was killed in a gunboat attack.

"If there is an immediate ceasefire, the extremists will immediately rear their heads," Defence Minister Amir Peretz told a stormy parliament session in Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert later said a ceasefire was possible only "when the threat over our heads is removed, when our kidnapped soldiers return to their homes and when we can live in security."

Encouraged by the temporary halt in air bombardments, however brief, tens of thousands of villagers fled southern Lebanon, the Hezbollah heartland which has borne the brunt of the onslaught.

Carrying piles of luggage, mattresses and blankets on car roofs or pickup trucks, people streamed from mountain villages toward the coastal highway leading north to Beirut.

Qana, where Jesus is said to have turned water into wine, achieved martyr status after an Israeli attack on a UN base there in 1996 killed 105 people, and the new raid prompted an outpouring of anger around the world.

Lebanese police said the dead included 30 children, killed in their beds in night-time air raids which left homes in ruins and villagers trapped beneath the rubble. An MP said 15 of the children had been disabled.

Rescue teams were preparing to continue the search for bodies still under the ruins of a shelter levelled by Israel forces as personal possessions, bags, and clothes of the dead, were piled up outside.

Flags flew at half-mast throughout Lebanon and banks and public institutions were closed in memory of the victims of what one Beirut newspaper charged was "butchery."

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the Qana carnage as a "war crime."

Hezbollah, whose July 12 capture of two soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid prompted the Israeli onslaught, vowed that "this horrible massacre... will not remain unpunished."

But the Shiite militant group reined in its rocket attacks during Monday's Israeli lull. Israeli officials said that compared with 156 rockets on Sunday -- a record number for a single day -- just two hit the Jewish state on Monday.

Angry demonstrators took to the streets in several Arab capitals, some burning Israeli flags and denouncing the US administration for its staunch backing of Israel.

Large pictures of dead children being retrieved from under the rubble were splashed on the front pages of newspapers across the Arab world, some framed in heavy black borders topped with blood-red headlines.

"How many babies have to die?" asked the English-language Daily Star newspaper.

Lebanon says 750 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli offensive, which has also displaced hundreds of thousands and laid waste to much of the country's infrastructure.

An AFP count has put the death toll at 530, while the United Nations has said around one-third of the casualties were children. A total of 51 Israelis have been killed, most of them soldiers.

Lebanese Red Cross teams recovered 20 bodies on Monday alone, among them that of an eight-year-old child, on roads in the south of the country.

The UN Security Council met immediately after the attack on Qana to adopt a resolution which, in unusually emotional language, expressed its "extreme shock and distress" at the casualties.

But it stopped short both of condemning Israel and of calling for a ceasefire after the United States had rejected a draft describing the attack on Qana as "deliberate".

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had appealed to the council to call for an immediate ceasefire, and warned Israel and Hezbollah they were both likely guilty of "grave breaches of international humanitarian law".

President George W. Bush said the United States was working "urgently" to end the conflict, but again resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire and avoided criticism of Israel.

Efforts to put together an international buffer force at the Lebanese border suffered a setback when the UN postponed a Monday meeting of potential troop contributors while details of a peace plan were hammered out by the major powers.

The devastation in Qana came a day after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed to strike cities in the centre of Israel if the Jewish state continued to attack civilians in Lebanon.

Israel had unleashed its firepower on Qana after flatly rejecting a UN call for a 72-hour truce to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Lebanon.

Israel pointed the finger at archfoe Iran, saying it pulled the strings of the Shiite militia in the escalating conflict.

"We are battling Hezbollah, which is nothing but the vanguard of the extremist regime in Tehran that finances and encourages its murderous activities," Peretz said.

But French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, who has insisted Iran must be a part of the solution, held talks with his counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki at the Iranian embassy in Beirut Monday.

Ahead of the meeting, the French minister talked up Iran's "stabilising role" in the region. "We think more than ever that the Iranians are an important and respected actor," he said.

Iran's main regional ally Syria meanwhile ordered its armed forces to raise their level of readiness, official media reported.

At the United Nations in New York, Israeli and Lebanese delegates sparred at a special Security Council debate on the conflict.

"We owe our people an honorable way out of this war," said Lebanon's acting foreign minister Tarek Mitri.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, retorted that Israel "has been repeatedly forced to act, not against Lebanon, but against the forces and the monstrosity which Lebanon has allowed itself to be taken hostage by."

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