At least 50 Lebanese citizens were killed on Sunday morning when the Israel Air Force attacked Qana, located east of the coastal town Tyre.
Israel said the area is a Hizbullah hub and was being used for launching Katyusha rockets onto Israeli towns in northern Israel. Israeli officials said residents were given advance warning of the attack.
Lebanese sources say most of the people killed were women, children and elderly people.
Israel’s Defense Minister Amir Peretz has ordered an inquiry into the attack.
Israel reiterated on Sunday that it would not hurry into a cease-fire before the pre-set goals of the current operation in Lebanon are achieved. Israel does not want to create conditions in which Hizbullah will be given time to replenish its weapons cache and attack Israel at a later date.
The United States has been supportive of this stand. Washington does not want to see a cease-fire as a temporary solution, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last Monday after a meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
Rice returned to the region on Saturday and met with Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other senior officials.
Originally, Rice talked of a deal to deploy an international force, comprised of up to 30,000 troops in southern Lebanon, in exchange for Israel evacuating the Shib’a Farms. This is an area of about 10 square miles on the Israel-Lebanese-Syrian border which Lebanon claims as its own, but the United Nations does not recognize as such.
Officials from Olmert’s office, however, said the Shib’a Farms would not be part of a deal on a cease-fire, according to the Israeli news portal Ynet.
Rice is scheduled to travel to Beirut on Sunday to discuss the latest developments with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, but Lebanese officials have asked her not to come, Reuters reported.