Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "deep sorrow" over the bombing of a Lebanese village that killed at least 54 civilians, including 37 children, but vowed the war against Hizbullah would go on.
Trying to stem international outrage over the attack on Qana, the Israeli military said it was unaware civilians were sheltering in the buildings it bombed and blamed Hizbullah fighters for using the area to fire rockets at the Jewish state.
The death toll and the television images coming out of the southern Lebanese village have intensified international pressure on Israel to accept an immediate ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
"I would like to express my deep sorrow at the death of innocent civilians," political sources quoted Mr Olmert as telling cabinet ministers after the air raid. But Mr Olmert said the offensive would continue.
"We will not blink in front of Hizbullah and we will not stop the offensive despite the difficult circumstances. It is the right thing to do," he said.
The government promised an investigation into the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old offensive on Hizbollah.
The raid has drawn parallels to Israeli shelling in April 1996 that killed more than 100 civilians sheltering at the base of UN peacekeepers in Qana during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" bombing campaign against Hizbullah.
Israeli officials quickly went on the defensive. The army said it had warned civilians to leave days ago.
Mr Olmert ordered humanitarian aid be allowed to reach the village. Senior officials blamed Hizbullah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, for starting the war by abducting two Israeli soldiers and killing eight others in a cross-border raid on July 12th.
"There is not one person whose heart is not crushed when children are killed," Justice Minister Haim Ramon told the cabinet, Army Radio reported. "But Israel is not the one that spilled the blood of the Lebanese children. Hizbollah is the one that spilled the blood."
The war has huge popular backing in Israel, where more than 300,000 people in the country's north have fled Hizbullah rocket attacks and sought shelter further south.
Many commentators call the offensive's Israel's most "just war" since the founding of the country in 1948.
At least 542 people have been killed in Lebanon in the war, although the Lebanese health minister estimated the toll at 750 including unrecovered bodies.
Fifty-one Israelis have been killed.
Israel's air force was unaware civilians were sheltering in the Qana buildings it bombed, the military chief said. A senior air force commander said a precision-guided bomb was dropped on the assumption Hizbullah crews that had fired volleys of missiles into northern Israel were hiding there.
"Had we known there were that many civilians inside, especially women and children, we certainly would not have attacked it," the commander said on condition of anonymity.
Asked how Israel's intelligence services could know about missile launches from Qana but not about the presence of dozens of civilians, the commander said: "We are capable of detecting missile launches because they are very dynamic."
By contrast, he said the civilians appeared to have been holed up for days, and were almost impossible to spot.
According to the officer, Hizbullah launched scores of missiles from Qana into Israel. He said several were launched within a few dozen metres of the bombed house.