[Flavius]

Hundreds of protesters are staging a violent demonstration in Beirut.

An angry crowd is attacking the UN building, chanting slogans against the US and in support of Hezbollah.

Can you blame them?

Dozens killed in Lebanon air raid

More than 40 people, including 20 children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on the southern Lebanese town of Qana.

Displaced families had been sheltering in the basement of a site which was crushed after a direct hit.

The US secretary of state has cancelled a visit to Lebanon as its prime minister says he will only discuss a full and immediate ceasefire.

Hundreds of protesters are staging a violent demonstration in Beirut.

An angry crowd is attacking the UN building, chanting slogans against the US and in support of Hezbollah.

"People are fed up in Lebanon," a protester told the BBC. "They are fed up."

Israel said the Shia militant group was responsible for the Qana strike, by using the town to launch rockets.

But Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora denounced Israel's "heinous crimes against civilians", and said there was "no room on this sad morning" for talks until Israel had halted its attacks.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was "deeply saddened by the terrible loss of innocent life.

"We are also pushing for an urgent end to the current hostilities, but the views of the parties on how to achieve this are different," she said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said earlier that Israel was not in a hurry to agree to a ceasefire until it achieved its goals in the area.

'Stop'

Witnesses said the early-morning strike flattened several sites on top of sleeping residents.

One survivor said the "bombing was so intense that no-one could move".

Reliable casualty figures are not yet clear, but reports said more than 40 had been killed, while sources in the Lebanese Red Cross said as many as 50 or 60 had lost their lives.

Elderly, women and children were among those killed in the raid, which wrought destruction over a wide area.

The BBC's Fergal Keane at the scene saw two small boys pulled from the rubble.

Reporters spoke of survivors screaming in grief and anger, as some scrabbled through the debris with bare hands.

"We want this to stop," a villager shouted.

"May God have mercy on the children. They came here to escape the fighting."

Israel's military said it had warned residents of Qana to leave and Hezbollah bore responsibility for using it to fire rockets at the Jewish state.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Qana says many did not have the means - or were too frightened - to flee.

Qana was the site of an Israeli bombing of a UN base on April 1996 that killed more than 100 people sheltering there during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive, which was also aimed at destroying Hezbollah.

Escalation

Sunday's strike came amid an apparent intensification of hostilities.

The Shia militia is fighting Israeli forces following a new incursion into southern Lebanon.

Israeli gunboats off the coast near Tyre have been firing heavy-calibre shells into the hills, apparently in support of ground forces.

Correspondents say the question is whether this flare-up is part of an escalation that will continue despite diplomatic efforts to seek a ceasefire - or a sign that a truce may be coming soon, with the two sides trying to get a final blow in before the fighting stops.

Before the Qana attack, the UN said some 600 people - about a third of them children - had been killed by Israeli action in Lebanon since their operations began 19 days ago.

A total of 51 Israelis, including at least 18 civilians, have been killed in the conflict, sparked by Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid earlier in July.

600 dead, a third of them children.
60 dead, half of them children.

Who are the terrorists now ?

**** ISRAEL

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