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Israeli Shelling Kills 18 in Gaza    [

    Hamas Chief: Truce With Israel Is Over
    By Ibrahim Barzak
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 08 November 2006

    Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal says that a truce with Israel is finished and is appealing to all Palestinian factions to resume attacks. Israeli tank shells ripped through a residential neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip early Wednesday, killing at least 18 members of an extended family, including eight children, and wounding dozens of others, Palestinian health officials said.

    "There must be a roaring reaction so that we avenge all those vicitms," Mashaal said.

    The military wing of the Palestinians' ruling group called on Muslims around the world to attack U.S. targets, a call disavowed by the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

    Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed regret over the deaths and, along with Defense Minister Amir Peretz, offered "urgent humanitarian aid" to the Palestinian Authority and immediate medical treatment to the wounded.

    Israel halted artillery attacks in Gaza while it investigated the incident, but said it would press forward with operations meant to halt Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli communities.

    Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh suspended talks on forming a more moderate government with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and both men declared a three-day mourning period. Abbas said the negotiations must continue.

    Russia and the European Union condemned the attack.

    The tank shells landed around a compound of four apartment buildings in Beit Hanoun, the northern border town that has been the latest focus of the Israeli offensive. Gaping holes were torn into the structures, owned by four brothers from the al-Athamna family who lived alongside each other. Blood pooled in front of the houses.

    Asma al-Athamna, 14, said her family was awakened early Wednesday by the sound of an explosion and her mother quickly ordered everyone out of the house.

    "She was saying, 'There is shelling,'" Asma recalled.

    As the family exited their home, another shell landed, killing the girl's mother, older sister and brother-in-law.

    "They were killed when they came out of our house into the corridor. A tank shell killed them. I was behind them and I was wounded," the weeping girl said from her hospital bed.

    A woman's headscarf, children's boots and slippers, and a pair of jeans - all burnt - were strewn outside the houses.

    Khaled Radi, a health ministry official, said all the dead belonged to the same family. More than 50 people were wounded, 14 of them seriously, Radi said.

    A military spokeswoman said artillery rounds had been fired at Palestinian rocket-launching sites, but far from the apartment compound.

    Abbas warned that Israel would have to "shoulder all the consequences for these crimes," and Haniyeh said the Palestinians reserved the right to "self-defense."

    Rahwi Hamad, 75, said he rushed outside after being awoken by blasts around 5:15 a.m.

    "I saw people coming out of the house, bleeding and screaming. I carried out a young girl covered with blood," Hamad said. "Inside the houses, we evacuated dismembered bodies ... There was a smell of blood and the stench of burnt bodies."

    Weeping relatives gathered outside the homes. Thousands, including relatives of the dead, massed outside Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, where some of the bodies were brought, along with. white shrouds for burial.

    Hospital director Mahmoud Al-Asali said ambulances carried three and four victims at a time, in some cases heaping bodies over the wounded in their rush to get to the hospital.

    "I have worked here as director for five years, and this is the most terrible scene I've ever seen," Al-Asali said.

    Mashaal said that his group's militants will answer the deaths with "deeds, not words."

    "The truce (with Israel) ended at the end of 2005," Mashaal told a news conference in the Syrian capital. "The armed struggle is free to resume, and the resistance is dictated by local circumstances."

    The truce expired on Dec. 31, but it had continued to be honored, with some infractions.

    Hamas' military wing called on Muslims around the world to target "the American enemy."

    "America is offering political, financial and logistic cover for the Zionist occupation crimes, and it is responsible for the Beit Hanoun massacre. Therefore, the people and the nation all over the globe are required to teach the American enemy tough lessons," Hamas said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

    Hamas has historically directed its violence against Israeli targets, carrying out dozens of suicide attacks over the past decade and killing dozens of Israelis, but not in recent years.

    Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, said the group had no intention of attacking American targets.

    The killing of Palestinian civilians in the past has often preceded a sharp escalation of violence. A series of deadly incidents last summer, including a June 9 explosion on a Gaza beach that killed eight civilians, was followed by the capture of an Israeli soldier and an ensuing Israeli invasion of Gaza.

    Spontaneous demonstrations erupted across Gaza after Wednesday's attack.

    In the town of Beit Lahiya, thousands called for revenge and chanted, "Death to Israel! Death to America!"

    Black smoke billowed into the skies over Beit Lahiya and neighboring Jebaliaya as angry residents burned tires in protest.

    Witnesses said dozens of schoolchildren hurled stones and bottles at the empty EU mission in Gaza City, and that Palestinian security officials were trying to prevent them from storming the building.

    Haniyeh urged the U.N. Security Council to discuss the shelling incident.

    Abbas accused Israel of trying to destroy peace, not promote it.

    "This is no doubt a terrible, despicable crime that Israel has committed against our people," he told Palestine TV. "We tell the Israelis, you are not seeking peace at all, but are destroying all chances for peace. You must therefore bear all the consequences of these crimes."

    Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israel "has no intention of harming innocent people," but "to our great regret, in the course of the fighting, regrettable things sometimes happen, such as the incident this morning."

    The bloodshed in Beit Hanoun followed a weeklong Israeli takeover of the town in pursuit of militants who launch rockets at southern Israel. More than 50 Palestinians, most of them militants, were killed in that operation and in clashes after the Israeli troops withdrew early Tuesday.

    "The Israeli operation throughout the Gaza Strip will continue as long as Qassam rockets land in Israel, as long as the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip continues and as long as the Hamas government chooses for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to continuously provoke Israel," spokewoman Miri Eisin said.

 

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    Israeli Shelling Kills 18 in Gaza
    BBC News

    Wednesday 08 November 2006

    At least 18 Palestinians have been killed and 40 wounded by Israeli tank fire in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, Palestinian sources have said.

    Palestinian officials said a barrage of tank shells hit civilian homes, and women and children were among the dead.

    Israel has expressed regret for the civilian deaths and says it is investigating the incident.

    Palestinian leaders have called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to force Israel to stop military raids.

    The Palestinian prime minister, Hamas's Ismail Haniya, denounced the Israeli attack as an "awful massacre" and said talks on forming Palestinian unity government would be suspended.

    Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz ordered the halt in artillery attacks and called for an urgent inquiry into the incident.

    Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed regret over the killings and offered humanitarian assistance to the wounded.

    Palestinian hospital officials said 13 of the dead belonged to the same family, and two of them were women and six were children.

    The Israelis withdrew from the town on Tuesday following a major offensive centred in Beit Hanoun.

    More than 60 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in a week-long operation that Israel says was aimed at stopping militant rocket fire into Israel from Gaza.

    National Morning

    TV footage from Beit Hanoun showed the victims being taken to hospital in their sleeping clothes, some with terrible injuries.

    "It is the saddest scene and images I have ever seen. We saw legs, we saw heads, we saw hands scattered in the street," 22-year-old eyewitness Attaf Hamad told Reuters news agency.

    "I saw people coming out of a house covered in blood. I started screaming to wake up the neighbours."

    Palestinian leaders announced three days of national mourning throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

    A local Hamas leader has called for the group to resume suicide bombings inside Israel, a policy suspended two years ago by the main militant faction.

    "Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth. It is an animal state that recognises no human worth. It is a cancer that should be eradicated," said Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led government.

    Shots have also been fired at the European Union office in Gaza City in an apparent retaliation, Palestinian authorities said.

    Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the building and youths threw stones, Palestinian sources reported, adding no-one was injured in the attack.

    Israeli forces also killed a 17-year-old civilian near Jabaliya refugee camp, hospital officials in Gaza said.

    Earlier, in a separate incident, five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli army raid near the West Bank town of Jenin.

    They were said to be members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.

    The Israeli army said it had found large quantities of arms during its six-day operation throughout Beit Hanoun which ended 24 hours earlier.

    But rocket attacks have continued to hit Israel. Following the Beit Hanoun deaths, militants fired rockets the nearby border town of Sderot, causing minor wounds to an Israeli woman.