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Israeli airstrike kills two children { June 13 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/world/middleeast/13cnd-mideast.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/world/middleeast/13cnd-mideast.html
June 13, 2006
Israeli Airstrike Kills 8 Civilians and 2 Militants
By STEVEN ERLANGER
GAZA, June 13 — Eight civilians died today and more than 40 were wounded during an Israeli missile strike against a car carrying sophisticated rockets belonging to Islamic Jihad.
One missile struck the car and killed two members of Islamic Jihad and apparently wounded a third. But a second missile hit the curb just in front of a house whose occupants had emerged to see what had happened, and the Mughrabi family and their neighbors were devastated.
Two children and three medical workers were among those killed in the second explosion, after the first explosion destroyed the yellow Volkswagen van of a noted Islamic Jihad rocket maker, Hamoud Wadiya, who was killed. Israel said Mr. Wadiya was transporting Katyusha rockets to launch at Israel, and rockets could be seen in the wreckage of the van.
The Katyushas are a factory-manufactured weapon of longer range and much higher accuracy than the crude Qassam rockets that Palestinian militants build in machine shops with explosives mixed in cooking pots. The Katyushas, Israel says, have been smuggled in to the Gaza Strip from Egypt and represent a significantly enhanced danger to Israeli cities like Ashkelon.
A weeping Hekmat Mughrabi said that her 30-year-old son, Ashraf, died in her arms. Ashraf ran to the door after the first explosion, trying to calm children playing on the roof. "He was shouting to the kids, 'Don't be afraid, don't be afraid,' " and hadn't even finished his sentence when the second missile hit, she told The Associated Press.
An angry Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called the Israeli actions "state terrorism" and accused Israel of trying to "wipe out the Palestinian people."
"Every day there are martyrs, there are wounded people, all of them innocents, all of them bystanders," said Mr. Abbas, whose aides feel his support for negotiations is being undermined by the civilian death toll.
"They want to eliminate the Palestinian people, but we are going to sit tight. We are sitting tight on our land. We want to establish our state and live in peace," he said. "What Israel is committing is state terrorism."
The deaths are bound to make it harder for Mr. Abbas and the United States to persuade Hamas to recognize the right of Israel to exist, to forswear violence and to accept previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements, which are based on a permanent two-state solution. Mr. Abbas will also find it more difficult to get Hamas to accept a referendum proposal that would at least implicitly recognize Israel.
Today's carnage followed the deaths last Friday of eight Palestinian civilians, seven of them from the same family, on a northern Gaza beach from an explosion. Israel insisted today that the explosion could not have been from any of the six shells it fired toward a target 400 yards away, but Palestinians insist that Israel is to blame. At the time, Mr. Abbas accused Israel of targeting the civilians on the beach.
There was pandemonium today at Al Shifa Hospital, where the dead and the wounded were brought. Gunmen surged through the courtyard, firing weapons into the air and banging on the door of the morgue to retrieve the bodies of their colleagues or family members. They grabbed stretchers and paraded the corpses in impromptu marches around the hospital yards and into the streets, bearing the black banners of Islamic Jihad and the yellow ones of Fatah and the Al Aksa Martyrs's Brigades, to which Ashraf Mughrabi belonged.
In a gruesome scene, one Islamic Jihad militant smeared the blood of his dead colleague onto his rifle and lifted it high into the air.
Amid the acrid smoke of burning tires, women shouted, "Death to Israel, death to the occupation."
The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, called for an international inquiry "to investigate the brutal crimes and the bloody Israeli massacres of our people." After Friday's explosion, Hamas said that it had abandoned its 16-month cease-fire with Israel, although Israeli officials insist that Hamas had started firing its own Qassams toward Israel a week before.
A spokesman for Islamic Jihad, Khader Abib, vowed revenge on Israel. "When we talk of war we mean it," he said. "We have the right to respond inside 1967 borders or '49 or wherever we want," he said. "It is one geographic space."
The Israeli defense minister, Amir Peretz, said today that Israel would no longer exhibit restraint toward Palestinians involved in attacks against Israel. "We will act with all our might and use all our means against any group that acts against us," said Mr. Peretz, whose hometown, Sederot, which practically borders Gaza, comes under frequent rocket attack.
The Israeli military said more than 100 rockets had been launched at Israel since Friday.
The Israeli chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told journalists this evening in Tel Aviv that Israel regretted the deaths of civilians but has "great determination" to prevent the use of the Katyusha rockets. "What has been carried out was within this context," he said. "We express deep regret for hurting the innocent and those who were not involved. Nevertheless, I reiterate that they operate within densely populated areas and we will not let cells we spot carry out their plans."
The director of the Shifa hospital, Dr. Ibrahim al-Habbash, said in an interview that the last week of conflict, including severe clashes between Hamas and Fatah gunmen and police, had drained the hospital of its blood supplies. But an appeal made in the mosques and over the radio had brought enough volunteers, he said. "The security issue is our most important one," he said. "We're not in a civil war, but chaos serves the aims of some people here."
On Monday, internal Palestinian fighting in Gaza killed two people and wounded 15 more as the headquarters of Fatah's preventive security was attacked. Monday evening, hundreds of Palestinian police and members of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades rampaged through Ramallah, setting fire to the Palestinian Parliament and one of the cabinet buildings.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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