28 Palestinians killed by IDF across territories (World Condems Israel)

19 Palestinians killed in IDF shelling in northern Gaza; sources: Most of the dead women and children

Taken from Haaretz, 08.11.06
By Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel

Israel was placed on high security alert Wednesday, hours after Israel Defense Forces artillery shells struck a residential area in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun early Wednesday, killing at least 19 Palestinians and wounding dozens of others.

Hamas swore to avenge the deaths, and called on all Palestinian groups to renew attacks inside Israel.

Later Wednesday, the head of Hamas' Qassam rocket unit, Ahmed Ouad, was killed along with another Hamas militant in an IAF strike on their car in the southern Gaza Strip. On Wednesday afternoon two Hamas militants were killed and four others wounded when the IDF opened fire on a Qassam rocket firing cell in northern Gaza. The dead were identified as Nimer Abu Al-Nadi, 17, and Iyad Swilan, 23.

Five other Palestinians, including four Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Bridages commanders, were killed in the West Bank, bringing the total number of people killed Wednesday to 28.

21 Qassams were fired at southern Israel from Gaza following the shelling, Army Radio reported. One person sustained light wounds.

Palestinians hurled stones and Molotov cocktails Wednesday afternoon towards the Jewish area of Hebron following the strike. An IDF soldier was lightly wounded by a stone, and several Palestinians wounded by rubber bullets.

Students at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank city of Ramallah also protested and threw stones.

Eight children and seven women were among the dead, the Palestinain Health Ministry said, adding that 17 of the victims were members of the Athamna family.

Khaled Radi, a Palestinian Health Ministry official, said all of those killed were civilians.

According to witnesses, the victims were sleeping when the 15-minute barrage of shells first hit.
The victims were identified as Fatma Ahmed Athamna, 80, Sanaa Ahmed Athamna, 35, Naima Ahmed Athamna, 55, Masoud Abdullah Athamna, 55, Sabah Mohammed Athamna, 45, Samir Masoud Athamna, 23, Fatma Masoud Athamna, 16, Arafat Sa'ad Athamna, 16, Mahdi Sa'ad Athamna, 13, Mohammed Sa'ad Athamna, 14, Sa'ad Majdi Athamna, 8, Mahmoud Ahmed Athamna, 13, Malik Samir Athamna, 4, Maisa Ramzi Athamna, 4, Nihad Mohammed Athamna, 33, Mohammed Ramadan Athamna, 28, Minal Mohammed Athamna, 35, Saker Mohammed Adwan, 45, and Sa'adi Abu Amsha.

Radi also said at least 40 people were wounded, all civilians. Four hospitals are treating the wounded across Gaza.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni expressed regret for the deaths, saying that Israel did not set out to harm innocent civilians.

The IDF confirmed that an artillery battery containing 12 shells had aimed at a site from where Qassam rockets were fired at the southern city Ashkelon on Tuesday. The artillery fire had been intended for a location about half a kilometer from the Beit Hanun houses.

At this stage it is unclear whether the incident was caused by a technical or human error.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz appointed Major General Meir Kalifi to head an investigation into the shelling.

Soon after the Wednesday attack, Peretz ordered the army to stop shelling in Gaza, and called for a speedy investigation into the incident.

The army has reduced the amount of artillery fire into Gaza in recent months, saying it was ineffective against the Qassam cells and inaccurate.

Nevertheless, the army decided to continue firing artillery shells sporadically, in specific instances.

At least seven houses in Beit Hanun houses were hit, witnesses said.

"It is the saddest scene and images I have ever seen," 22-year-old Attaf Hamad said. "I saw people coming out of a house covered in blood. I started screaming to wake up the neighbors."

One man wailed as he tried to find his son. "Where is my son?" he screamed.

"We were asleep and we were awakened by shells hitting the house of my uncle next door. Then the windows to our houses were blasted away," said Asma Athamna, 14, who suffered shrapnel wounds.

"We fled the house only to be hunted outside. The shells killed my mother and sister and wounded all my siblings."

Family member Akram Athamna, an off-duty policeman, said he was woken at dawn by the sound of a shell exploding.

"I looked, and about 50 meters away, I saw smoke coming out of the house of my uncle Saad," he said. "It looked like the shells hit the top floor, and my brother and I ran down into an alley."

He said he counted about 15 shells hitting and that many of the casualties were people who fled outside after the first explosions and were caught in the open.

"Projectiles were fired directly onto the people who were rushing out of the house," he said.

"There was blood everywhere. I saw my neighbor, Sakher Adwan, he went to get his sister, and he was killed."

Rahwi Hamad, 75, who lives across the street, said he woke to the sound of shells exploding and people screaming.

"I opened my window and I looked out and I saw a shell hit a neighbor's house ... When I came out, another shell had hit the house," he said. "There was a stench of blood and (burned) flesh."
Large holes had been punched in the fronts of the houses and their balconies had collapsed.

Surviving relatives sat weeping in front of the buildings. One man dipped his fingers in a puddle of blood and daubed it on his face.

"God avenge us, God avenge us," he cried.

Firefighters hosed the blood off buildings and cobblestones while ambulance crews gathered body parts from nearby streets and gardens.

The incident comes a day after the IDF ended a week-long military assault in which at least 52 militants and civilians were killed.

In the wake of the shelling, a Hamas spokesman called on all the Palestinian factions to renew terrorist attacks inside Israel.

Earlier Wednesday, an Israel Air Force air strike destroyed the house of a leading Hamas militant in Gaza City, Hamas and security sources said.

No one was injured in the strike, they said, as the occupants were warned ahead of time to leave.

Four killed in West Bank In the West Bank, IDF troops ambushed a group of Palestinian militants near the West Bank town of Jenin early Wednesday, killing four, Palestinian security officials said.

After the ambush and the ensuing gunbattle, 30-year-old Ayman Kabala had climbed to his a rooftop to observe the clashes was shot dead, security and medical officials said.
The military said it was checking the report.

The four local commanders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party, were walking in the streets of Kfar Yamoun in the early morning when IDF troops opened fire, the security officials said.

The Al-Aqsa commanders were identified as Salim Abu Al-Hija, Mahmoud Abu Al-Hasan, Taher Abara and A'ala Hamaysa.

The troops and militants exchanged fire, and the men fled into a nearby olive grove, where other soldiers shot them dead, they said.
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ISRAEL APOLOGISES
Israel has apologised for an artillery barrage which killed 18 civilians including eight children in Gaza, as the Palestinian government declared three days of mourning to commemorate those who died.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said in a statement that he regretted the attack but said that Israel's army had fired in an attempt to prevent Palestinians from firing rockets into Israel.

World Condems Israel

UN - Middle East Envoy
The special UN envoy for the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, said he was "deeply shocked and appalled" by the shelling of civilian homes by Israeli forces.

UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territories
"This brutal collective punishment of a people, not a government, has passed largely unnoticed by the international community," John Dugard said in a statement.

"The Quartet ... has done little to halt Israel's attacks."

"Worse still, the [UN] Security Council has failed to adopt any resolution on the subject or attempt to restore peace to the region. The time has come for urgent action on the part of the Security Council," he said.

EU
In Brussels, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's external relations commissioner, said the shelling by Israel of civilian homes in Beit Hanun was "a profoundly shocking event".

"Israel has a right to defend itself but not at the price of the lives of the innocent," she said.

UK
Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary, said she was deeply disturbed by the deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, saying it was hard to see how the Israeli strike could be justified.
"I am gravely disturbed by the deaths of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, in an Israeli strike on Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip," she said in a statement.

"I call on all sides to meet their obligations under international humanitarian law and to do their utmost to avoid harming civilians, especially children."

TURKEY
Despite being a regional ally of Israel, Turkey was also critical.

The foreign ministry said in a statement: "Israel's disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force against [Palestinian] rocket attacks is not conducive to permanent security and stability in the region.

"On the contary, it ... fans the spiral of violence and mutual enmity and leads to the indefinite postponement of possible peaceful coexistence," the statement said.

ARAB LEAGUE
In Cairo, the Arab League denounced the Palestinian deaths as a massacre and called an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from its 22 member nations.

Amr Moussa, the organisation's secretary general, said: "These massacres of children, women and civilians are unjustified and incomprehensible and unexpected.
"Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories have gone too far."