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this abhorrent Israeli State-Sanctioned Terrorism has got to stop! 
| quote: | Sydney Morning Herald
An Israeli air strike killed at least 54 Lebanese civilians, including 37 children, in the southern village of Qana today, police said. It was the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old war on Hezbollah.
The attack prompted the Lebanese government to cancel a planned visit to Beirut by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would hold no negotiations before a ceasefire and officials said they had told Rice to stay away from Beirut until the fighting stopped.
Siniora denounced "Israeli war criminals". He demanded an immediate, unconditional ceasefire and an international investigation into "Israeli massacres".
Lebanon's premier, Fouad Senioria, said: "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."
The air strike, whose target was not immediately clear, occurred as Rice was in Jerusalem on a mission to persuade Israel and Lebanon to agree on an international force to deploy on the border.
Israel's offensive in Lebanon will continue, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet today. Israel's air force was unaware that civilians were sheltering in the building, the military chief said.
Mothers embraced their dead children in shock today as rescue workers tackled the rubble and dust of buildings flattened by the raids.
Rescue workers using only their bare hands searched through piles of debris - all the Israeli raids left behind of the buildings - while distraught women joined in to retrieve the bodies and take them away.
A three-storey building in Qana where dozens of displaced civilians were sheltering and several other houses were destroyed in the dawn raid, killing many people in their sleep.
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.
Red Cross workers covered the corpse of one dead child with a blanket. A woman in a red-patterned dress lay crumpled and lifeless in the broken masonry. A leg poked out from the rubble nearby. Another child lay dead in the street.
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.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/is...4197998127.html
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| quote: | BBC News: Analysis: A second Qana Massacre?
The southern Lebanese town of Qana is known for two events in history, and there could soon be a third as news comes in of rising civilian casualties from an Israeli air strike there.
In realms of biblical narrative, some believe it to be the scene of Jesus Christ's first miracle, turning water into wine during the wedding at Cana of Galilee.
In modern times, it was the scene of one of the bloodiest events of the modern Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli shelling of a UN base sheltering Lebanese civilians 10 years ago.
International shock at those deaths - more than 100, and another 100 injured - led to huge pressure for a ceasefire deal bringing an end to Israel's last sustained military operation against Hezbollah militants, codenamed Operation Grapes of Wrath.
The Qana Massacre, as it is known in Lebanon, remains a powerful symbol for Lebanese people of what they say is Israel's indiscriminate and disproportionate response to Hezbollah's rocket attacks.
'No accident'
Israel still insists the 1996 shelling was an accident and that its forces had a legitimate militant target - a Hezbollah military unit that had fired mortars and rockets from near the Qana base.
Then, as now, Israel accused Hezbollah of using the civilian population as human shields when they launched their attacks.
However, a UN investigation reported in May 1996 that the deaths at the Qana base were unlikely to have been the result of an accident as claimed by the Israelis.
The UN report cited the repeated use of airburst shells over the small UN compound, which sent down a deadly torrent of shrapnel that caused terrible injuries among the unprotected civilians.
The UN also noted the presence of Israeli helicopters and a drone in the skies over Qana which must have witnessed the bloodbath.
In the current round of Israel's bombardment, Qana has again been in the news - the scene of several incidents, such as the bombing by Israel of two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances and the death of a young Lebanese photojournalist, Layal Nejib, also in an air strike on her car.
Looking at the map, it is not hard to see why Qana is never far from the headlines when Israel bombards southern Lebanon.
It lies at the northern edge of the Lebanon's southern uplands which border Israel and also at the confluence of five strategic roads in the hinterland south-east of the southern city of Tyre.
Qana and the villages surrounding it are a strong pro-Hezbollah area and Israel says it has repeatedly been used to fire rockets over the border about 10km (six miles) to the south.
Israeli officials say leaflets had been dropped in the area warning civilians to leave their homes so it could conduct more anti-Hezbollah operations.
However, it seems clear that, with the number of civilian cars and convoys which have been bombed on the roads heading to Tyre, many residents chose to ignore the Israeli warnings
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5228554.stm
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