New details have emerged in the Israeli bombing that killed four UN observers in south Lebanon. UN officials say they made at least ten separate phone calls to the Israeli military begging them to stop the attack. Each time they were told the bombing would stop. In total, Israel launched more than twenty strikes, including four rounds that made direct hits. The bombing continued even as rescuers tried to save the victims. The dead observers were from Finland, Austria, Canada and a China. UN Secretary General Koffi Annan has not backed down from his charge the bombings were apparently deliberate. He spoke in Rome on Wednesday.

• U.N. Secretary General Koffi Annan: “The shelling of the U.N. position which was long established and clearly marked started early in the morning and went on till after seven p.m. when we lost contact. Our general and the troops, the people on the ground were in touch with the Israeli army, tried warning them, 'please be careful, we have positions here, don't harm our people’. And many calls went out until this happened. You can imagine the anguish of the soldiers and the men and women, unarmed military observers who were down there in the service of peace.”

The killings of the four UN observers brought the UN death toll in the current crisis to six. A Nigerian couple with UNIFIL’s civilian staff were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit their home near Tyre. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a statement responding to the Israeli attack after the United States refused to accept language condemning: “any deliberate attack against U.N. personnel.”