US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose latest Middle East mission was thrown into turmoil by the attack, said it was time to "get to a ceasefire" in Lebanon but stopped short of calling for an immediate halt to hostilities.

Police said 52 villagers, including 30 children, were killed in the pre-dawn air raid which left homes in ruins and villagers trapped under the rubble. Bahia Hariri, an MP for southern Lebanon, said 15 of the children were disabled.

It was the bloodiest attack since Israel launched its war on the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah following the capture of two soldiers on July 12.

Israel expressed "regret" over the civilian deaths and ordered an inquiry but said it had warned residents to leave and pinned the blame on Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah for launching rockets from the village.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was in "no rush" for a truce and told Rice that Israel needed 10 to 14 days more to continue its offensive against Hezbollah, an Israeli government official said.

Amid faltering diplomatic efforts to staunch a conflict now in its 19th day, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the Security Council in an emergency meeting to call for an immediate ceasefire.

"We must condemn this action in the strongest possible terms, and I appeal to you to do likewise," Annan told the meeting of the 15-member council.

"I'm deeply dismayed that my earlier calls for immediate cessation of hostilities were not heard, with the result that innocent lives continue to be taken and innocent civilians continue to suffer," he said, adding that both sides in the conflict were guilty of "grave breaches of international humanitarian law."

The White House, Israel's staunchest backer, urged the Jewish state to use restraint in its military offensive in Lebanon, calling the Qana killings a "horrible event".

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the Qana carnage as a "war crime," demanding an immediate ceasefire in a conflict that Health Minister Mohammed Khalifeh said had killed 750 people.

An AFP count has put the death toll at more than 500, while the UN has said around one third of the casualties were children.

In Beirut, a mob of angry demonstrators smashed into the UN building as thousands took to the streets in protest while Hezbollah and Palestinian militant movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad vowed revenge.

"This horrible massacre, like the others, will not remain unpunished," said Hezbollah, which has fired off waves of rockets against northern Israel since the onslaught began.

In Qana -- scene of another deadly bombardment 10 years ago -- rescue workers with only their bare hands clawed through rubble of flattened homes and an underground shelter to find survivors while mothers hugged their dead children in a final hopeless embrace.

"The first thing I remember is spinning around. My head hit the wall and I heard screams," said Qassem Shalhoub, who lost many family members. "They were all calling at me. They were saying, 'stop the bleeding.' Others said, 'pull my son from the rubble.'"

Israel 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.

Siniora ruled out any talks on putting an end to the conflict until there was an immediate halt to Israel's offensive, signalling the likely failure of Rice's efforts to win support for the deployment of an international force in southern 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," he told reporters.

Rice, on her second trip to the region in less than a week, refrained again from calling for an immediate truce after talks in Israel and a trip to Lebanon was cancelled.

"We want a ceasefire as soon as possible, I would have wanted a ceasefire yesterday if possible, but the parties have to agree to a ceasefire and there have to be certain conditions in place," she said.

A US official said Rice would return home to Washington on Monday to start intensive diplomacy aimed at reaching a UN resolution on the conflict.

Reaction to the bloodshed was fierce across the Arab world, and even Britain, Washington's closest ally, branded the Qana attack as "quite appalling."

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said "nothing can justify" the deadly bombardment and Syria, Lebanon's former powerbroker, described it as "state terrorism."

The village, said to be where Jesus turned water into wine, was 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 around the southern port city of Tyre were also bombarded 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.

More than 140 rockets fired from south Lebanon landed across towns in northern Israel, injuring 14, police said.

Fresh fighting also flared on the border after Israeli forces made a fresh push into southern Lebanon near the village of Taibe. Hezbollah said its Shiite guerrillas had inflicted casualties on Israeli troops during "fierce confrontations".

The attacks came after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to strike cities in the centre of Israel if the Jewish state continued to attack civilians in Lebanon.

Israel's war on Hezbollah or the Party of God, has triggered the deadliest cross-border fighting in a quarter century, made hundreds of thousands homeless and laid waste to much of Lebanon's infrastructure.

The Jewish state has lost 51 nationals since it launched the offensive following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah on July 12, many of them soldiers killed in combat.

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 -- but has ruled out another occupation of its northern neighbour.

Last week nine soldiers died in fighting around the key border town of Bint Jbeil in its biggest single-day death toll of the conflict, facing tougher-than-expected resistance despite its military superiority.

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 (30 miles) south of the border, the deepest strike into Israel since the warring began.

US President George W. Bush had called Saturday for militias in Lebanon to be disarmed and for Lebanese security services to be deployed across the country, including the Hezbollah-controlled south.

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

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