POKE JOHN PAUL II yesterday denounced what he called a week of "incredible violence" in the Middle East and said Lebanese civilians were suffering the most from actions that were hard to justify.
The Pope's words during his weekly Sunday blessing were his first in public about the conflict since the Qana shelling.
"Last week, unfortunately, was marked by incredible violence, which once more upset the Middle East. Once again it was the civilian population particularly Lebanese who paid the price of actions of war for which it is difficult to find acceptable justification," he said.
"To the combatants on both sides and those who share their positions I repeat that true peace and true justice cannot be achieved through the hatred of, violence and weapons," he added in his comments to pilgrims and tourists in St Peter's Square.
The Vatican's Secretariat of State last Friday angrily condemned the Israeli massacre of civilians in Lebanon and demanded an immediate end to fighting in the Middle East.
The Pope's diplomatic office was unusually blunt in condemning Israel, saying there was "no political or military reasons which can justify such dramatic consequences.
The Pope's words on innocent civilians suffering in the Middle East also appeared to apply to the killing of 18 Greek tourists by fundamentalists in a Cairo hotel last week.
Meanwhile, yesterday, Libyans demonstrated in the streets of Tripoli against Israel's shelling Qana, the Libyan news agency Jana reported. It said the crowds converged on the UN bureau in the Libyan capital where they issued a statement condemning what they called "the most horrible terrorist aggression by the impure Zionists with the support of their strategic American ally".
The Fijian Defence and Home Affairs Minister, Mr Paul Manueli, yesterday charged that Israel knew the Qana UN base it targeted on Thursday was full of civilians but "deliberately" shelled it, killing 102 people.
"We are shocked by what happened, there is no excrise. I can't believe that this was a mistake. It was a deliberate attempt on their part to shell this camp," Mr Manueli said in Qana.
"Two (Israeli) Apache helicopters were flying overhead and had a clear view of everything," the base commander, Lieut Col Wage Waqanivalagi of Fiji, said.
The Fijian officer and minister acknowledged that the Iranian backed Hizbullah had fired Katyushas at northern Israel 300 metres from the base five minutes before the shelling occurred.