QANA, Lebanon (AFP) - At least 51 people have been killed, many of them children, when Israeli war planes blitzed a village in Lebanon, the deadliest single strike since the Jewish state unleashed its war on Hezbollah 19 days ago.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the attack as a "war crime," demanding an immediate ceasefire in a bloody conflict that has now killed more than 500 people and left a trail of destruction across the country.

Rescue workers with only their bare hands clawed through rubble of flattened homes to find survivors from the raid on Qana, launched just as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was back in the region pursuing a new round of diplomacy to try to end the conflict.

"At least 51 people were killed. They include 22 children," said Salam Daher, the Lebanese civil defense chief in the region on Sunday.

"The bombing was so intense that no-one could move," said a distraught Ibrahim Shalhoub, 26. "I succeeded in getting out and everything collapsed. I have several members of the family inside and I do not think that there will be any other survivors."

©AFP - Nicolas AsfouriIsrael, which has received staunch US backing since the conflict began on July 12, unleashed its firepower on Qana after flatly rejecting a UN call for a 72-hour truce to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Lebanon.

"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," Siniora told reporters.

Lebanese officials also said that said Rice, who was holding more talks with Israeli officials in Jerusalem on Sunday likely to focus on plans for an international force for Lebanon, was no longer expected to visit Beirut.

But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who met Rice on Saturday, said Israel was in "no rush" to reach a ceasefire.

The army also rejected any responsibility for the civilian deaths in Qana, saying Hezbollah used the village as a base to launch rockets, and that residents had already been ordered to leave.

©AFP - Nicolas AsfouriThe village, said by some to be where Jesus turned water into wine, is also the site of an Israeli bombing of a UN base in April 1996 that killed 105 people during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive -- also aimed at wiping out Hezbollah.

Dozens of other villages in the region around the southern port city of Tyre were also bombarded for two hours overnight with fire from the Israeli navy, air force and artillery.

Israeli planes also tore up the Masnaa border crossing into Syria, leading to the closure of the main Damascus-Beirut route.

Israeli ground troops also launched a new cross-border incursion and were engaged in fierce battles with Hezbollah guerrillas on the outskirts of the southeastern border village of Taibe.

About 30 rockets fired from south Lebanon also landed across towns in northern Israel early Sunday, without causing any injuries, police said.

 
©AFP - Menahem KahanaThe attacks came after defiant Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to strike cities in the centre of the country if the Jewish state continued to attack civilians in Lebanon.

Israel, backed by the United States, has refused to set a date for ending its war on the Shiite Muslim group that has made hundreds of thousands homeless and destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure.

In a televised speech apparently timed to coincide with Rice's arrival, Nasrallah accused the top US diplomat of returning to the region just to impose "conditions" on Lebanon as part of plans to create a new Middle East order.

UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland had appealed for a truce to allow casualties to be removed and food and medicine to be sent into the war zone, saying one third of the casualties were children.

But an Israeli foreign ministry official said a ceasefire was unacceptable because Hezbollah "would exploit it to gather civilians to use them as a human shield in the combat zone".

©AFP - Gali TibbonSpeaking en route to Israel, Rice had said she was expecting "fairly intense" talks with Israeli and Lebanese officials with "give and take" on both sides, but had been encouraged by progress on some fronts.

Israeli radio reported that Olmert and Rice discussed humanitarian aid for Lebanon and the possible deployment of an international force in the country.

"We are not setting a deadline, but obviously as we want an early end to the violence it is important that we get agreement on the elements," said Rice. "I think there are a lot of elements that are coming together."

Israel, which last week lost nine soldiers in fighting around the key border town of Bint Jbeil in its biggest single-day death toll of the conflict, said Saturday it had killed between 70 and 80 Hezbollah men over the past three days.

But facing tougher-than-expected resistance despite its military superiority, Israel has now pulled its forces back from Bint Jbeil to a nearby village it captured last weekend.

On Friday the Israeli military claimed to have hit a launch pad it suspected was used to fire a new type of missile that hit Afula, 50 kilometres (35 miles) south of the border, the deepest strike into Israel since the warring began.

©AFP - Hassan JarrahThe Israeli military has said it would deploy Patriot anti-missile batteries near Tel Aviv -- Israel's largest city -- if Hezbollah used long-range missiles.

US President George W. Bush stressed in his weekly radio address that "militias in Lebanon must be disarmed, the flow of illegal arms must be halted, and the Lebanese security services should deploy throughout the country".

He said that during his meetings with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Washington Friday they agreed that a "robust multinational force must be dispatched to Lebanon quickly".

Bush and Blair did not call for an immediate ceasefire, and warned Israel's archfoes Syria and Iran -- supporters of Hezbollah -- that they must become "proper and responsible members of the international community" or face "the risk of increasing confrontation".

Blair said world powers would meet at the UN Monday to discuss the possible deployment of a multinational force. But Syria said it would simply be an "occupation force" that served Israel's interests.

©AFP - Menahem KahanaThe British leader defended his siding with Bush on the Lebanese crisis, and brushed off mounting protests back home about the use of a Scottish airport by US jets carrying weapons bound for Israel.

Two US aircraft carrying weapons and "hazardous material" from Texas to Tel Aviv were due to stop off in Britain this weekend, and demonstrators planned to protest Sunday against the flights.

Israel has mobilised thousands of army reservists and says it plans to create a narrow buffer zone in Lebanon until the mooted international force is deployed.

Israel has lost a total of 51 people since the conflict erupted, many of them soldiers killed in combat.

Two Indian UN peacekeepers were wounded on Saturday in an Israeli air raid on their post in south Lebanon. Four UN military observers were killed last week in an Israeli strike on their observation post.

With 800,000 Lebanese displaced by the fighting, the International Committee of the Red Cross criticised the "unacceptable" humanitarian situation and said Israel had to do much more to spare civilians.