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Israeli Tanks Shoot 8 Palestinians to Pieces
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Palestinian doctors give first aid to a boy critically injured in the tank shelling.
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Additional Reporting By Mostafa Al-Sawwaf, IOL Correspondent
BEIT
LAHIYA, Gaza Strip, January 4 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) –
Israeli occupation troops killed Tuesday, January 4, eight Palestinians,
including a 10-year-old boy, as they pressed ahead with their bloody
raids into the Gaza Strip.
The
horror of the Israeli raid came only five days before Palestinian
presidential election, pushing frontrunner Mahmmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen)
– favored by Israel and the United States as “moderate” -- to take
a rare swipe at the “Zionist enemy” and offer his heartfelt
condolences to the families of the victims.
Five
more of the fatalities of the tank shelling in the northern Gaza city of
Beit Lahiya were teenagers.
They
were killed when troops shelled a farmhouse in the village and were
ferried to the hospital in pieces, Dr. Mahmmoud Al-Asali, the director
of Kamal Edwan hospital, told IslamOnline.net.
Four
of the victims have been identified as Jabril Abdul Fattah, 14, Hani
Kamel, 17, Mohammad Hussein 17 and only 10-year-old Rajeh Ghassan.
A
Palestinian security source said the shelling has further injured a
large number of farmers.
Witnesses
said farmers were grieving and collected twisted limbs and body parts
scattered across their farmland.
Fatah’s
military wing Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades vowed to avenge the “grisly
massacre,” urging the Palestinian Authority to support the Palestinian
resistance.
Israeli
occupation army spokesman Captain Yishai David, meanwhile, said the
shelling came shortly after a number of Palestinian mortar rounds were
fired towards the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel, wounding
one Israeli.
“Four
mortars were fired, three against the Erez industrial zone, one near a
school bus,” he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Hawkish
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given the army free rein to put
an end to the rocket attacks both from northern Gaza and in the south of
the territory where Jewish settlers are frequently targeted.
On
Sunday, January 2, Israeli occupation troops launched a new offensive
into the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanun, just hours after they ended a
three-day-long sweep of Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza, which
killed 11 Palestinians.
“Zionist
Enemy”
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“We pray for the souls of our martyrs who fell today in the Zionist enemy's tank shelling in Beit Lahiya,” said Abbas.
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The
Israeli attack drew immediate condemnation from Abu Mazen, who
reiterated that such incidents were aimed at disrupting Sunday’s
election.
“We
pray for the souls of our martyrs who fell today in the Zionist enemy's
tank shelling in Beit Lahiya,” PLO chairman Abu Mazen told an election
meeting in southern Gaza.
Abbas
started
2005 with an election campaign in the war-torn southern city of
Rafah, strongly denouncing the Israeli “incursions, the assassinations
(and) the destruction of houses.”
“Rafah
suffers from oppression and occupation, but it will not be defeated and
humiliated and will not back down except after victory and the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with Al-Quds
[occupied Jerusalem] as its capital,” he told a cheering crowd.
Abbas,
however, had angered Palestinian factions last month when he called a
new for “demilitarizing” the Intifada and criticized the rocket
attacks on the Israeli settlements as counterproductive.
Palestinian
Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath told AFP that the Beit Lahiya attack was a
“terrible crime,” while Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat said that
it was part of an “Israeli escalation designed to compromise the
Palestinian election.”
The
presidential election — the first to be held since 1996 — is to take
place January 9 in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
With
seven candidates vying, Palestinian voters will elect a new chairman of
the Palestinian Authority to replace their emblematic leader Yasser
Arafat, who dramatically passed away on November 11, 2004.
A
new poll conducted by academics at Al-Najah University in the West Bank
showed that 59 percent of Palestinians intend to vote for Abbas, giving
him a 31 point lead over his nearest challenger, the independent
candidate Mustafa Al-Barghouthi.
However,
the same poll showed that 60 percent oppose Abbas' call for an end to
the armed Intifada against Israel.
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