AMMAN, Jordan, July 30 (UPI) -- Lebanese rescue workers, with Red Cross symbols across their vests, dig out tiny bodies from under the rubble and carry their limp corpses in their arms. The small, twisted and charred bodies are in pajamas; the curls on a little girl's head still bounce as her lifeless body is being carried away.
The scene is once again in the southern Lebanese town of Qana.
Around 55 civilians, most of them children and women hiding from the relentless Israeli air strikes, perished in an early dawn Israeli air strike targeting the two-storey house where members of two families had taken refuge as the Israeli military offensive against Lebanon entered its 19th day. Eight people inside the house survived and more bodies remained under the rubble.
The images, many of them aired live by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite channel, unleashed widespread rage across Lebanon and much of the rest of the Arab world.
In Beirut, thousands of protesters gathered in front of the U.N. building in central Beirut to denounce Israel and the United States, while a mob stormed the building, breaking the windows of a building representing an organization they see as having provided the legitimate cover for the Israeli assault.
Shouting slogans supporting the Shiite Hezbollah organization, demonstrators demanded the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador from the Lebanese capital, blaming the continued war on Washington, which has been largely seen as inciting Israel to try to militarily eliminate or weaken the resistance before a ceasefire. They say it was American "smart bombs" that are killing and destroying their people and country.
The developments came as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was in Israel on a second Middle East tour in a week to promote a plan to deploy an "international stabilization force" on the Lebanese-Israeli border and to put in motion a ceasefire that would usher in a "new Middle East."
While no exact time was set for her visit to Beirut, which was expected Sunday or Monday, the Lebanese government told Rice she was not welcome before an immediate ceasefire is declared.
In a joint news conference with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora demanded an "unconditional and immediate ceasefire in the aftermath of these continuous massacres...We cannot accept any action without an immediate ceasefire and there can be no progress otherwise."
He added that the attack on the Qana household was "no mistake, it came after heavy artillery first."
Israel immediately blamed the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah organization for the attack, saying its fighters were shooting rockets from the building, and later claimed the Israeli Defense Forces had warned the residents of Qana to leave their town before targeting it.
Relatives of the victims told Arab news channels that all Hezbollah fighters had left Qana and the towns at the outset of hostilities that began on July 12 when Lebanese guerillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed another eight in a cross-border operation.
They said the Shalhoub and Hashem family members who perished could not afford to flee towards Beirut as taxis were asking for $1,000 per car to Beirut.
In addition, they complained, the roads from southern Lebanese towns to the north have been coming under constant fire by Israeli war planes for the past 19 days. As one relative shouted into a television camera: "At home we're not safe, on the road we're not safe. Where are we supposed to go?"
Sunday's attack was reminiscent of an Israeli air strike against a U.N. shelter in Qana in April 1996, in which 108 Lebanese civilians, most of them women and children, were killed during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive.
It was another Israeli military operation that aimed, but failed, at eliminating Hezbollah.
If anything, the group gained more strength at the time as its fighters continued to strike against Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon and northern Israeli towns, ultimately ending of the 22-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000.
Lebanese and Arab analysts say they see the "second Qana massacre" as an "intentional act of desperate revenge" against the Lebanese after the Israeli forces failed to weaken the Shiite guerilla group or defeat them in the battle fields in the southern border villages of Maroun el-Rass and Bint Jbeil.
They see the targeting of Lebanese civilians in general, in which the death toll has risen to almost 750 by Sunday and 800,000 displaced, is intended to pressure the population and the political forces that sought to disarm Hezbollah, according to Security Council Resolution 1559, to rise against the Islamic resistance.
However, the war has only united the diverse political forces in this tiny country of 3.8 million people, and the Qana attack closed whatever rifts remained on how to stop the confrontations.
It also appeared to have changed Lebanese conditions for releasing the two captured Israeli soldiers. House Speaker Berri told reporters that the "conditions for exchanging prisoners have now changed."
Berri, who was authorized to represent Hezbollah, Friday proposed a ceasefire and exchanging the two Israeli soldiers with the Lebanese prisoners held in Israel, backing out of earlier demands to exchange them for other Arab and Palestinian detainees.
Analysts say that the "second Qana massacre" might be the event that will stop the Israeli assault on Lebanon, just as the first one ten years ago ended the "Grapes of Wrath" offensive.
Parliament member Gen. Michel Aoun, a Christian who leads the Free Patriotic Movement, said another "miracle" might come out of Qana, or the "miracle" of stopping this war.
The first miracle to which Aoun was referring is a Biblical one, where it is believed that Jesus Christ made his first miracle in Qana, or Biblical Cana. It is said that Jesus turned a large quantity of water into wine at a wedding feast he was attending in the town.
However, there is no Jesus Christ today to perform the miracle of ending the bloodshed in Lebanon.
But, like Jesus died to save humanity, the Lebanese and Arabs hope the blood of these children might just be what saves their nation.
