At a news conference in Tel Aviv Sunday night, military officers showed aerial footage taken two days ago of Katyushas being fired in proximity to houses in Qana, and of a Katyusha launcher firing missiles and then being driven into Qana and hidden inside a house.

Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir accused Hezbollah of "using their own civilian population as human shields."

Israel said residents of Qana had been warned to leave. On Thursday, the Israeli military's Al-Mashriq radio that broadcasts into southern Lebanon warned residents their villages would be "totally destroyed" if missiles were fired from them. Leaflets with similar messages were dropped in some areas Saturday.

But Shalhoub and others in the village said residents were too terrified to take the road out of the village.

The road to the nearest main city, Tyre, is lined with charred wreckage and smashed buildings from repeated Israeli bombings.

More than 750,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the fighting. But many thousands more are still believed holed up in the south, taking refuge in schools, hospitals or basements of apartment buildings amid the fighting - many of them too afraid to flee.

Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr disputed allegations that Hezbollah was firing missiles from Qana.

"What do you expect Israel to say? Will it say that it killed 40 children and women?" he told Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV station.

Before dawn Sunday, Israeli ground forces backed by heavy artillery fire crossed the border and clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas in the Taibeh Project area, about two miles inside Lebanon. Hezbollah said two of its fighters were killed. The Israeli military said eight soldiers were wounded.

Some 460 Lebanese, mostly civilians, had been killed in the campaign through Saturday, according to the Health Ministry - before the attacks on Qana. Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 18 civilians, Israeli authorities said.