| | ![]() | | Most of the dead are women and children | ![]() | | 19 Palestinians killed in IDF shelling in northern Gaza | ![]() | | By Avi Issacharoff
and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and News Agencies | ![]() | | 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.
Ten children and seven women were among the dead, the Palestinain Health Ministry said, adding that 18 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.
| ![]() | ![]() | | | 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. The initial assumption is, however, that the wrong coordinates were fed to the artillery unit.
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.
Eight Qassams were fired at southern Israel from Gaza following the shelling. One person sustained light wounds.
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. Neighbors did not have the
heart to tell him his son was dead.
"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, a 30-year-old civilian man 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.
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 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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