'Shells Kept Falling' On Gaza Apartment, Killing 17 in Family

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip, Nov. 8 -- Islam al-Athamnah was asleep on a foam mattress next to her brothers and sisters, crowded together like puzzle pieces on the floor of their top-story apartment. Uncles and cousins slept in the levels beneath, her mother and father in an adjoining room.

"Then something hit us," Islam, 14, recalled from a hospital room with sky-blue walls. "The windows shattered, and then a second shell hit the house. It was all smoky. We were using our hands to find the kids."

Palestinian emergency workers and frightened neighbors pulled scores of Islam's wounded relatives from the ruins of their home in the frantic hours after the 5:30 a.m. blasts, which witnesses here said came from Israeli artillery fire.

Palestinian health officials said 20 civilians were killed, 17 of them from Islam's extended family. At least seven of the dead were children asleep at the time of the blasts, which left heavy jagged shrapnel on rooftops and in living rooms.

More than 60 people were wounded, including Islam's 5-year-old sister, Israh, and 3-year-old brother, Mohammed, who tossed in a hospital bed here with thickly bandaged legs, crying for his wounded mother. Islam's father, two grandparents, an uncle and many cousins were among the dead.

"I just grabbed who I could and ran," said Islam, her face freckled with dozens of pinprick shrapnel wounds. "I was lucky because more shells kept falling."

The blasts along Hamad Street, which witnesses said numbered between four and 10, ripped through several generations of a family of farmers, doctors and taxi drivers who live near fruit orchards on the northern edge of this town. A grandfather died along with his 23-year-old son and 1-year-old granddaughter. Three brothers died. So did two sisters.

The mourning tents that appeared throughout this agricultural town became the venues for public despair, nationalist fervor and strident anger toward the Jewish state and its ally, the United States, which provides Israel with roughly $2 billion annually in military aid. Palestinian leaders called for three days of mourning across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as international pressure to stop Israel's operations in this town of 28,000 people.

"We expect the international community to intervene," said Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government. "But the United States bears direct responsibility for this by giving Israel the green light. We don't expect anything from them."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed regret for the incident, and the Israeli military announced a suspension of artillery fire into Gaza, designed to suppress the frequent Palestinian rocket fire directed at Israeli cities, pending an investigation.

The inquiry will be led by Maj. Gen. Meir Kalifi, deputy chief of ground forces, who headed the June investigation into an explosion on a Gaza beach that killed six members of the Ghaliyah family. He concluded that Israel was not responsible for the blast, although a Human Rights Watch investigator said the explosion most likely came from a fired artillery shell.

In a statement, Israel's military said that "the responsibility for any civilian casualties lies with the terrorist organizations" firing rockets toward Israel. Six of the crude rockets landed in Israel on Wednesday despite the recent intensive military operation here intended to stop them.

In a separate incident in the West Bank town of Yamoun, near Jenin, Israeli soldiers in civilian clothes killed four fighters from the military wing of the Fatah movement and one civilian. As night fell here, an Israeli airstrike on a car in northern Gaza killed two gunmen from Hamas's military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, bringing the day's toll to 27 dead.

"Our response to these crimes and these massacres has to be unity," said Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and head of Fatah. "I condemn anyone who launches rockets. It is fruitless and gives an excuse, not a reason, for the Israeli massacres, which have no justification."

Abbas is in Gaza for talks with Hamas to form a national unity government, hoping to end economic sanctions that have been in place against the Palestinian Authority since the radical Islamic movement took power over its ministries in March. The United States, the European Union and Israel classify Hamas, which does not recognize the Jewish state's right to exist, as a terrorist organization.

Palestinian officials warned that the deaths in Beit Hanoun would increase tensions between Fatah and Hamas, especially the harder-line Hamas leaders in exile.

Khaled Meshal, head of Hamas's political wing in Damascus, Syria, called on "all the factions of the resistance, despite the difficulties on the ground, to respond."

"This is an Israeli act of escalation and provocation that will have a negative impact both internally and bilaterally," said Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian legislator from the Third Way movement. "The consequence of this unleashed violence against a civilian population will be yet, unfortunately, another circle of violence."

In a statement faxed to news agencies here, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades said that "America is providing the political and financial cover" for Israel's military operations. It called on supporters "around the world to teach the American enemy a hard lesson."

Abu Obaida, a spokesman for Hamas's military wing, said in a telephone interview later that "our only theater of operation is in Palestine and only against the Israeli occupation." He added, "We appeal to the American administration to apply one standard of humanity to Israelis and Palestinians."

In Washington, President Bush said in a statement: "We send our condolences to the families of all those affected. . . . We call on all parties to act with care and restraint so as to avoid any harm to innocent civilians."

Israel withdrew most of its forces here Tuesday after a six-day operation that left dozens of homes in ruins, sidewalks crumbled, lampposts toppled and backyard orchards torn up by bulldozers. Al-Nasser Mosque, site of a standoff between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen, lay in ruins, only its turquoise-tipped minaret still standing.

Special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.