By Ze`ev Schiff and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and Agencies-30/07/2006
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking after the Israel Air Force strike bombing of the Lebanese village of Qana, said it was time for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Rice will hold a second round of talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday evening, after cancelling a scheduled trip to Beirut to hammer out a cease-fire deal with Israel.
At least 54 Lebanese citizens were killed, at least 37 of them children, in the IAF strike on a building early Sunday, Lebanese police said. Dozens of others were reportedly trapped in the rubble. Several houses collapsed and a three-story building where about 100 civilians were sheltering was destroyed, witnesses and rescue workers said.
Israel, meanwhile, expressed "deep regret" for the deaths and said it would investigate the bombing.
"Israel deeply regrets, is greatly saddened, by this attack on innocent civilians in Lebanon. Israel takes full responsibility and is going to start an open investigation to find out how this happened," government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.
Rice said she was saddened by the bombing and confirmed that she had cancelled a planned trip to Beirut, but would stay in Israel to try to work out a deal for ending the 19-day-old conflict.
"I am here in pretty difficult and dicey circumstances because I do believe that it is better to try and address these issues face to face with the parties," she said.
But she repeated that a cease-fire could not mean a return to the position before the 19-day war, which was triggered by Hezbollah`s abduction of two Israel soldiers on July 12.
"We have to try and do our work well so that there will not be more and more and more incidents over many, many more years," Rice said.
Various world leaders
condemned the air strike on Qana.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that the IAF hit at least ten targets in Qana. According to the army, the sites targeted were houses occupied by Hezbollah cells that launched Katyusha rockets into Israel in recent days.
The IDF said it had warned residents of Qana to leave and said Hezbollah bore responsibility for using it to fire rockets at Israel.
Olmert said that Qana was used as a Hezbollah base for launching hundreds of rockets at Israel.
"From the village and its surroundings, hundreds of Katyusha [rockets] have been fired at Israel, toward Kiryat Shmona and Afula," Olmert said during a cabinet meeting, according to a participant in the meeting.
Lebanese Red Cross officials in Beirut said rescuers had extracted 38 bodies from the devastated buildings, including 23 children, and seven wounded. At least 17 more bodies were feared to be still under the rubble, seven of them children.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered the defense establishment to investigate the incident.
Hezbollah vowed on Sunday to retaliate for the air strike on Qana. "This horrific massacre will not go without a response," Hezbollah said in a statement.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Sunday he could not hold any talks on resolving the Middle East crisis before an immediate cease-fire.
"There is no place on this sad morning for any discussion other than an immediate and unconditional cease-fire as well as an international investigation into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," Siniora told a news conference in Beirut.
In April 1996, Israeli shelling of a base of United Nations peacekeepers in Qana killed more than 100 civilians sheltering there during Operation Grapes of Wrath. The international outcry over the Qana village shelling effectively ended the operation.
Some 40 targets were hit in IAF strikes overnight across Lebanon. Among the targets were buildings used by Hezbollah, rocket launchers and bridges.
