QANA, Lebanon (Reuters) - Rescue workers placed the body of a girl on the ground and ran to search for more. They heaved hunks of concrete off a dead child caked in dust.
The rigid corpse of a young boy, his bloody face disfigured, lay near a pulverized building.
Hours later, rescuers were still clambering over rubble using their hands to pull the bodies of men, women and children from buildings destroyed by an Israeli air strike on the southern Lebanese village of Qana on Sunday.
Most of the victims were asleep in the basement of the building when the bombs hit at 1.30 a.m. (2230 GMT on Saturday).
The raid killed at least 54 Lebanese civilians, including 37 children, Lebanese police said -- the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old war on Hizbollah.
"Why have they attacked one- and two-year-old children and defenseless women? What have they done wrong?" asked Mohamed Samai, whose relatives were among the dead.
The bodies were wrapped tightly in plastic sheets and taped closed. They were assembled under an awning in the southern town. Flowers were placed on the corpses.
Israel's military said it had warned residents of Qana to leave and said Hizbollah guerrillas bore responsibility for using the village to fire rockets at the Jewish state. Israel vowed to pursue its campaign until Hizbollah stopped.
Five Lebanese civilians, including two children, were killed by another Israeli air strike in the southern town of Yaroun early on Sunday afternoon, security sources said.
UNAWARE OF CIVILIANS
A senior air force commander said Israel had dropped a bomb on the building in Qana on the assumption it was sheltering Hizbollah crews and was unaware civilians were there.
"Had we known there were that many civilians inside, especially woman and children, we certainly would not have attacked it," the commander told Reuters.
A woman in red-patterned pajamas lay crumpled and lifeless in the broken masonry. A leg poked out from the shattered concrete nearby. A medic carried a dead child in his arms from rubble. Other children lay dead in the street.
A medic checked the pulse of a man covered in blood and raised his eye lids, desperately looking for signs of life before giving up. Rescue workers draped sheets over bodies, the rigid arm of one corpse pointing to the sky.
"This is not only Israel's fault, this is the fault of America and the Arab states that backed Israel's attack. If the Israelis want to attack let them fight the resistance face-to-face," said Samai, before collapsing.
About 63 civilians had been sheltering from Israeli air strikes in one of the destroyed buildings, witnesses and rescue workers said. Some of them had come from surrounding areas, seeking shelter from the daily bombardments in Qana, located about 11 km (7 miles) from the border with Israel.
The strike was less than a kilometer from the mass grave of more than 100 Lebanese killed in Qana in 1996 by Israel's shelling of a U.N. base. Killed in Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" bombing campaign, they too had been sheltering from bombardment.
Qana resident Ibrahim Shalloub, speechless with distress, looked for his sister and cousins, still buried under the rubble.
