Even After Qana, Olmert says no hurry to agree ceasefire

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday expressed "deep regret" for the Israeli air strike that cost scores of life in the south Lebanese village of Qana, but said Israel would not declare a cease-fire until it had reached the targets it had set at the beginning of the war.

Olmer, responding to harsh criticism of the strike, said that Hezbollah had used Qana as a 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.

In Israeli media accounts, Olmert was further quoted as saying that "All the residents (of Qana) were warned and told to leave. No one was ordered to fire on civilians and we have no policy of killing innocent people."

Qana was the scene of an April, 1996, in which 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 1996 Qana village shelling effectively ended the operation. It was also said to be a factor in the subsequent election defeat of then-prime minister Shimon Peres, whose support among Israeli Arabs was sapped by the Qana deaths.

The Lebanese Red Cross officials in Beirut said Sunday that over 50 people were killed in the air strike. A total of 23 of the dead were children, they said.

At least 17 more bodies were feared to be still under the rubble, seven of them children.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz has ordered an investigation of the incident.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday "This horrific massacre will not go without a response."

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The Israeli army reported that residents of a southern Lebanon villages were warned to leave before their village was attacked, which caused the death of 35 civilians, 21 of whom were children.

Army spokesman Captain Jacob Dallal said: “This village is a region which Hezbollah has launched missiles at Nahariya and Galilee.

Residents of this village were warned several days ago to leave, that this was an area of combat ...

The reason we attacked was that Hezbollah was firing from there and therefore Hezbollah bears the responsibility in this village."

A three-story house, where nearly a hundred civilians took shelter, was destroyed early Sunday morning in an attack on Qana village.

In 1996, Israel hit the UN base in the same village in an operation named Grapes of Wrath and killed hundreds of civilians.

In his statement to Israeli Radio, Israeli Defense Minister Haim Ramon said those who didn’t leave southern Lebanon were considered terrorists or people linked with Hezbollah.

Since the attacks begun, nearly 700 people mostly civilians, have lost their lives.

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=hotnews&alt=&trh=20060730&hn=35214

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday rejected calls for Israel to halt its offensive in Lebanon following an air raid in the village of Qana that left dozens of civilians dead.

"The state of Israel, the government and the IDF (armed forces) express deep regret for the incident," Olmert said at the end of a weekly cabinet meeting.

"Despite the hard incident I will not request the defense establishment to stop the fire or change the type of operations," he said.

"We will continue to act with no hesitation against Hezbollah. We will not stop this operation and explain to the world that we are doing the right thing."

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