More than 140 injured during nine-hour raid on refugee camp
More than 140 Palestinians were wounded during the nine-hour Israeli raid, part of a spasm of violence that has battered US hopes of calming the 29-month-old conflict ahead of a possible war on Iraq.
Israel's army launched the Gaza operation just hours after the first Palestinian suicide bombing in two months ripped through a bus packed with high school students in the port city of Haifa. A 14-year-old American girl was among the dead.
Witnesses and medics said the tank round crashed into a crowd watching firemen hose down a commercial building set ablaze in the raid on Jabalya refugee camp which triggered hours of pitched gunbattles. Palestinians said the blast killed eight unarmed civilians. In the chaos, two headless bodies lay on the ground. Bloodied survivors crawled or were dragged through streets. Gaza hospitals were overwhelmed with wounded, many of them children.
"God help us, we are running out of medicine, we are running out of blood," a doctor shouted.
The militant Islamic group, Hamas, behind a wave of suicide attacks on Israelis, vowed revenge, saying: "The Jews will pay a dear price."
The army insisted it had done the utmost to avoid civilian casualties and said the tank shell had hit a man standing in an empty street, aiming a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at troops as they withdrew from the area.
Israeli government officials said most, if not all, of the Palestinians killed were gunmen. Palestinian medical officials said five of the fatalities ranged in age from 13 to 16 and a 60-year-old man was also shot dead. Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat condemned the raid as an act of revenge by Israel for the Haifa bombing.
The army said it was "part of an ongoing war against terror and its infrastructures" and said troops arrested a senior Hamas "terrorist," demolished his house and seized a large cache of weapons and explosives. Among the dead in Wednesday's Haifa bus bombing was a US citizen, Abigail Leitel, 14, a student at a local high school taking part in an Arab-Jewish co-existence project.
Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron identified the Haifa bomber as Hamas member Imran Salim al Qawasmeh, 21. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said a letter praising the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington was found on the bomber's body after the blast, which blew off the bus's roof and hurled bodies into the street.
Five of the dead ranged in age from 12 to 17, including students returning home from class. Two soldiers were also killed. More than 40 people were wounded.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Israel blamed President Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for failing to rein in militants. The Palestinian Authority denied responsibility and condemned the attack.
Brigadier-General Gadi Shamni, Israel's Gaza brigade commander, said the Jabalya operation was not retribution for the Haifa bombing, but a continuation of an offensive against militants in the area that began two weeks ago. Those raids, reflecting the tough line Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new rightist government has been taking against militants, have drawn rare US condemnation of Israel over the killing of Palestinian civilians.
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