Lebanon had been scheduled to play Australia, Bahrain and Kuwait in home-and-away qualifiers by mid-November but only managed to complete one game, a 1-1 draw in Beruit with Kuwait, before the latest crisis hit the country.

With the Israeli military continuing to pound Lebanon in a bid to destroy the Hezbollah militant group, the AFC said the Lebanese Football Association (LFA) had told it the country could not take part in the qualifiers.

"We are unable to proceed in our participation in the AFC Asian Cup 2007 qualifications due to the to the tragic circumstances (in) our country ... as a result of the barbaric attack imposed on Lebanon by the Israeli Army," LFA general secretary Rahif Alameh said in a letter posted on the AFC website.

He said that in the circumstances, "we had no other choice than informing you regretfully our decision to cease our participation in the AFC Asian Cup".

An AFC official told AFP it was not just that Lebanon could not play its games in Beirut, but that it could not get a team together with some players living in southern regions and displaced by the violence.

The AFC management board convened an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss the situation, and referred it to the competitions committee which has 24 hours to decide whether to accept the withdrawal.

Lebanon says 750 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli offensive, which has also displaced hundreds of thousands and laid waste to much of the country's infrastructure.

An AFP count has put the death toll at 530, while the United Nations has said around one-third of the casualties were children. A total of 51 Israelis have been killed, most of them soldiers.