"In a period of three weeks, over six hundred people have lost their lives and over a million have been displaced," WCC general secretary the Rev. Samuel Kobia said in a 3 August appeal to the international community. "Much needed aid and assistance that could be of help in these dire circumstances has been hampered and is unable to reach those in need," he said.

"Yet these developments seemed to have no effect on the leaders of countries like Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom," Kobia said in the statement in which he appealed particularly to the three countries to do everything possible to stop the bombings, and negotiate a cease-fire as well as a comprehensive peace settlement.

Kobia, whose organization groups more than 340 Christian churches, mainly Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox, said, "Dozens of villages have been flattened into ruins by merciless bombings of the Israeli forces that are continuing unabated despite promises of a temporary cease-fire."

He added, "The present disproportionate acts of violence of immense magnitude can have no justification." The UN Security Council had been paralysed by the power of the dominant nations, and appeals by religious leaders for an immediate cease-fire had fallen on deaf ears, said the WCC head. "This blind faith in military violence to resolve disputes and disagreements is totally unwarranted, illegal and immoral." Kobia urged the Israeli government to give guarantees that humanitarian agencies would be allowed unhindered access to those in need, noting that plans to send a WCC pastoral delegation to Lebanon have been put on hold because of security concerns and transport difficulties.

The Hezbollah group which is battling the Israeli army in southern Lebanon on 2 August fired more than 230 missiles, some of which hit 70 kilometres into Israel, the furthest yet, while in Kuala Lumpur, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the following day: "The real cure for the conflict is the elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be an immediate cease-fire first." Ahmadinejad, whose country supports Hezbollah, was attending a summit of Muslim nations in Malaysia.

Kobia said as well as offering prayers for the people of Lebanon - both Muslims and Christians - he was praying "for the people of Israel who have fallen victims to the missiles that continue to be fired indiscriminately into their towns and villages".