The militant Islamic group Hamas has vowed to avenge Israel's killing of the commander of its military wing and 14 other Palestinians, including nine children, in a missile strike in the heart of Gaza City.
At least 145 Palestinians were also wounded when an Israeli fighter slammed a warhead into the home of militant leader Salah Shehada in a crowded neighborhood early on Tuesday. The dead included a two-month-old baby.
The attack drew rare criticism from Washington which joined the European Union, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a slew of countries around the world in condemning the strike.
Israel said the attack was an unavoidable step to protect its people from suicide bombers. Israeli officials said the army had incorrect intelligence information showing that Shehada was alone in the apartment at the time.
They said Shehada was behind a wave of suicide bombings that had killed dozens of Israelis over the past two years and was planning a series of large-scale suicide attacks to take place in the next 72 hours.
Gaza City rang out with bursts of automatic machinegun fire at a funeral attended by about 300,000 people, at which a man held aloft the tiny body of a baby wrapped in a flag as masked men chanted: "Death to Israel! Death to America!"
Residents said there had been no warning, not even the sound of a plane before the missile attack, which left the neighborhood a picture of devastation.
Dazed residents stumbled through dust and debris, looking for loved ones who might still be trapped in the wreckage.
Israel described the attack as one of its most significant blows against Palestinian militants waging an uprising for an independent state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, while expressing regret for the loss of civilian life.
But Hamas's vows of revenge raised the possibility of another upsurge of violence -- after a month of relative calm -- endangering a fragile new dialogue between Israel and Palestinian moderates.
Shehada, head of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, was killed a day after Hamas's spiritual leader, wheelchair-bound Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said it would consider halting suicide attacks if Israel withdrew from occupied West Bank cities.
But Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a senior Hamas official, said on Tuesday: "Hamas's retaliation will come very soon, and there won't be only just one (attack)...After this crime, even Israelis in their homes will be the target of our operations."
INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION
Within hours of the attacks, Palestinian militants fired rockets and mortar bombs at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and Israeli towns nearby, causing minor damage.
Gun battles also erupted in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Ramallah which have been reoccupied by Israeli troops for almost a month after Palestinian militants killed 26 people in back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem.
Officials at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital said 15 people had been killed in the raid -- including Shehada's wife, a daughter, his deputy commander and nine children apparently from neighboring homes hit by the missile.
The civilian casualty toll drew swift condemnation by the United Nations and European Union.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said there had been signs that a deal to end a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings within Israel was within reach before the Israeli strike.
The United States, Israel's main ally, which has been reluctant to criticize the Jewish state's offensive against the Palestinians in recent weeks, called the strike "heavy handed."
"This was a deliberate attack on this site, knowing that innocents would be lost as a consequence of this attack," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Inside a local mortuary, medical workers identified lumps of flesh retrieved from the wreckage of Shehada's home.
"This is a crime. No normal-minded, conscientious and feeling person could imagine such a massacre," Palestinian President Yasser Arafat told reporters at his West Bank compound, surrounded by Israeli troops.
(China Daily July 24, 2002)
