ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 19, 1996 TAG: 9604190038
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: QANA, LEBANON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
note: lede
Israeli shells killed at least 75 Lebanese refugees Thursday, filling a U.N. camp with blood, horror and survivors' cries for revenge. Israel admitted an ``unfortunate mistake'' in the attack.
The carnage was the worst since Israel began its onslaught against Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon eight days ago. While expressing regret for the civilians' deaths, Israel fiercely defended its Lebanon campaign and said the shells had been aimed at Hezbollah rocket launchers.
President Clinton called for a cease-fire by all parties and ordered Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the region to mediate. Israel said it would accept a cease-fire if others agreed to it, a move that would leave Israel short of its goal of shutting down the Hezbollah war machine.
Israel sent dozens of tanks to the Lebanese border after the Qana attack, apparently to deter Hezbollah retaliation. Israel TV said the army made sure the tank convoys were filmed, suggesting they were a message to Hezbollah not to fire any more Katyusha rockets rather than a sign that an Israeli ground attack was coming.
The Israeli attack left the U.N. base littered with bodies, shredded clothing and scraps of building materials. Badly wounded people were rushed to a hospital, where angry civilians attacked three Hezbollah members, beating them with sticks and chairs and accusing them of being the source of Lebanon's misery.
Timur Goksel, spokesman for the 4,500-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, confirmed that 75 people died at Qana, where about 500 refugees were at the U.N. base.
Lebanese leaders called the shelling ``the mother of all atrocities'' and a new page in ``the annals of terror.''
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said, ``I'm pained by every person, every woman, every child, who is being killed.'' But he said Israel had ``no choice but to defend its citizens,'' and accused the Iranian-backed guerrillas of Hezbollah of hiding behind civilians.
Later Thursday, Israel's Army radio reported that Israel had agreed to a cease-fire as called by the United States on condition that Syria and Lebanon commit to restrain Hezbollah.
With diplomatic pressure mounting after the attack, the United States reportedly agreed Thursday to a European-backed U.N. proposal calling for a cease-fire in Lebanon.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the proposal ``meets the objectives'' of an immediate cease-fire by all parties and avoids language that might interfere with U.S. peace moves.
Earlier, U.S. officials said they could not support an Egyptian resolution, backed by the Arab League, which would have condemned Israel alone for the violence.
In wake of Thursday's bloodshed, Clinton called for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon.
The guerrillas have been fighting since 1985 to drive Israeli troops from the border enclave they occupy in southern Lebanon. Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon, has stayed out of the latest conflict.
The United Nations said that shortly before the Israeli shells landed, Hezbollah guerrillas about 300 yards from the U.N. compound had fired two rockets and eight mortar rounds at the Israelis. The Israeli shells apparently were in retaliation for that fire, but missed their target.
Unlike the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who fled north when Israel warned it would attack their villages, the 6,000 refugees at U.N. bases had stayed, believing they were safe among the peacekeepers.
Refugee children were playing outside, watched by their parents from a grass hut - a traditional bouri that the 70 Fijian soldiers at the base had built to remind themselves of their Pacific Island home - when the first of five 155mm howitzer shells slammed in at 3 p.m. It was just after lunch.
As the smoke cleared, dozens of victims lay on the ground in pools of blood. Peacekeepers broke down in tears as they covered the dead with blankets. Women wailed and beat their chests as they stood over the bodies. Men slapped their palms to their foreheads in disbelief, and some shouted: ``Death to Israel! Death to America!''
More than a hundred people were wounded, including four soldiers from the Fijian force, Goksel reported.
At Jebel Amel hospital in Tyre, Kamel Nayef, 16, a high school student, moaned from the pain of his bloodstained, plastered right leg.
``I knocked on the door of doomsday,'' he said. ``I felt I was facing a firing squad.''
An exact death toll was difficult to determine because casualties were spread around several hospitals and many of those killed in Qana had been blown apart.
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. AP U.N. soldiers look at a shelter demolished byby CNBIsraeli shells Thursday. Four U.N. troops from Fiji were among the
injured. color
2. chart - Caught in the cross fire. color AP KEYWORDS: FATALITY