GAZA: Palestinians in shock after Israeli artillery shells kills 18 civilians in northern Gaza

Record ID: 791496

  • Title: GAZA: Palestinians in shock after Israeli artillery shells kills 18 civilians in northern Gaza
  • Date: 8th November 2006
  • Summary: (W3) JENIN, WEST BANK (NOVEMBER 8, 2006) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF MILITANTS FIRING IN THE AIR/ MARCHING WITH GUNS
  • Embargoed: 23rd November 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA8922P61OOQX4ZWRT98HJCX5WP
  • Story Text: Israeli artillery shells killed 18 civilians in a northern Gaza town on Wednesday (November 8), Palestinian officials and witnesses said as Israel went on high alert after militants threatened to avenge the carnage.
    Residents reacted in despair in Beit Hanoun, a town in the northern Gaza Strip that has been a launching ground for Palestinian militants' rocket attacks on Israel.
    The strike drew condemnation across Europe and the Middle East, with the European Union expressing profound shock, and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest Islamic body, accused Israel of war crimes.
    Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz ordered an investigation and a halt to shelling in Gaza until its completion, the prime minister's office said.
    Some of the dead were killed in bed as shells struck seven houses, and others rushed outside, finding no safety. It was the deadliest single Israeli attack on Palestinians in four years.
    Thirteen members of one extended family were killed and the dead included seven children and four women, residents and the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the killings as a "horrible and ugly massacre" and told a news conference that, while he condemned rocket attacks on Israel, they did not justify such harsh military action.
    "Maybe Israel is comfortable repeating things it has said before that there is no Palestinian partner for peace. But every time we get close to reaching some agreements - the massacres start again. Why are these killings happening?," Abbas told reporters in Gaza.
    Palestian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh held prayers with members of his cabinet before condemning the killings.
    "We call on the Security Council to meet urgently to study the massacres that have been committed against people and take decisions that show their responsibility to protect the Palestinian people and to stop this continuous aggression against them."
    The Islamic Jihad group, which never accepted the ceasefire brokered by Abbas and Egypt, vowed to carry out suicide bombings in response to the Beit Hanoun strike.
    Israeli police said they had gone on high alert to thwart possible attacks. Hundreds of troops and policemen deployed across the city of Jerusalem.
    Hamas's armed wing, decrying Washington's "political and financial support" for Israel, appeared to call on Palestinians to attack U.S. targets. In what would be a break from the Islamist group's policy, it urged them "to teach the American enemy harsh lessons".
    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said he and Peretz "voiced sorrow over the deaths of Palestinian civilians ... and offered emergency humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority and medical care for the wounded".
    An Israeli military spokesperson said the army "fired preventative artillery at launch sites from which Qassam rockets were launched (on Monday) into Ashkelon", in southern Israel.
    "We are investigating a deep investigation of the Palestinian claims, we didn't shoot to our acknowledgement to the area that the Palestinians are saying but an area that is distance at least 400 meters to that house," Major Avital Leibowitch told Reuters.
    Israeli media said an artillery battery had missed its target, about a kilometre (half a mile) from Beit Hanoun. An army spokeswoman could not confirm this.
    In a rare show of unity, Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas donated blood together and visited a hospital in northern Gaza treating some of Beit Hanoun's 54 wounded.
    The two leaders have so far failed to resolve differences blocking the formation of a unity government of professional experts that Palestinians hope can ease Western economic sanctions imposed after Hamas came to power in March.
    The carnage in Beit Hanoun could bring world pressure on Israel to curb its Gaza offensive, begun in June after militants seized a soldier.
    Israeli ground forces pulled out of Beit Hanoun on Tuesday after a week-long operation aimed at curbing rocket attacks that killed at least 52 Palestinians, more than half of them militants, hospital officials and residents said.
    In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian students clashed with Israeli soldiers. The youths threw stones at the soldiers who replied by throwing gas canisters to disperse the crowd.
    Also on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers killed four gunmen and a civilian during a raid near the West Bank city of Jenin, Palestinian security officials said.
    Israeli forces also killed a Hamas gunman and a 17-year-old civilian near Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp, hospital officials said. The Israeli army said soldiers had shot three gunmen after being attacked with an anti-tank missile.
    In Syria,Khaled Meshaal, leader of the governing Hamas group, vowed on Wednesday (November 8) to retaliate against Israel after its shelling of Gaza which killed 18 Palestinian civilians.
    Meshaal urged Palestinians to be "careful in the words they use" to condemn the Israeli attack so as not to give the Jewish state what he described as an excuse to kill more Palestinians.
    "All Palestinian groups are urged to activate resistance despite the difficult situation on the ground, but the Zionist massacres need a Palestinian action. Our confidence in our military wings is big to respond on this aggression and resist the occupation and revenge to those victims," Mshaal said at a news conference in the Syrian capital Damascus.
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