Israeli shelling in Gaza brings agony and rage

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip -- By yesterday afternoon, when he knew that at least 16 members of his family had died in what Israeli officials suspect was an errant Israeli shelling, Ramez al-Atamna was in shock.

His eyes glazed, his voice drained of emotion, he recited the painful losses: His wife Manal. His brother Samir. Two daughters, 3 years old and 7 months. His father, his stepmother, his grandmother, a sister still in high school. His son Abdullah, 7, lay in a hospital bed beside him, an elastic bandage wrapped around the stump of his amputated left foot.

"My son, he is all I have left of my family," said Ramez, 30, clapping his hands and wiping them against each other in a gesture of finality and resignation.

The dawn barrage in the northern Gaza Strip killed 18 people, health officials said, making it the single deadliest Israeli strike on civilians in six years of violence. It threatened to usher in a new wave of instability and bloodshed in Israel and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Khaled Mashaal, the Damascus-based leader of the militant group Hamas, declared the end of a truce with Israel that most Hamas militants have observed since early 2005, after the group killed more than 200 Israelis in suicide bombings. "The armed struggle is free to resume," he said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the more moderate Fatah faction, called the deaths "a terrible, despicable crime."

The carnage dealt a further blow to already-faltering talks between Hamas and Fatah to form a new coalition government. Hamas won legislative elections in January, sparking an international boycott over its refusal to renounce violence or recognize Israel that has crippled the Palestinian economy.

Israel vowed yesterday to continue its four-month offensive in Gaza, which it says is aimed at stopping militants from firing homemade rockets that hit southern Israel nearly daily, sowing widespread fear.

Israel opened an investigation in the Beit Hanoun strike, saying the military had aimed at an open area that had been used to launch rockets.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh told Israel Radio the "working assumption" was that Israeli shells caused the deaths, adding. "It's clear a serious mistake was made."

Government spokesman Miri Eisin said in an interview that Israel would "investigate the fact that it looks like errant artillery shells were fired." But he blamed the militants, saying Israel would stop its attacks when they stop theirs.

On Nov. 1, the Israeli Army launched the operation in Beit Hanoun, the military's biggest push in months to stop Palestinian rocket fire. During the campaign, 57 Palestinians were killed.

Israeli tanks pulled out Tuesday after heavy fighting that destroyed the town's mosque and left shopfronts and houses mangled, but militants continued the rocket attacks on Israel.

The Atamna family went to bed Tuesday night looking forward to their first quiet sleep in a week.

Instead, pandemonium broke out.

Early yesterday morning, just hours after the attack, family members gathered around a sprawling puddle of blood-tinged water, ringed with bloody flip flops, body parts, and rubble. There, in a passageway between two of the four concrete-block buildings that house the extended clan of at least 70, most of the victims lost their lives trying to escape the shelling.

Family members said the attack began when an explosion hit the roof of the tallest building, which stands about 200 yards from an orange grove, the kind of open space where Israelis say rocket launchers are often located. It punched a 4-foot hole in the concrete roof.

Mohammed, 15, was killed in his bedroom as he slept.

Dozens of panicked relatives rushed down to the passageway to flee, where another shell apparently landed on or near them.

All day yesterday, relatives repeatedly returned to the spot, dazed. Some tried to wash away the gory debris.

Akram al-Atamna, a policeman, sat on the ground staring at the blood.

"What has happened?" he said. "They have massacred us."

He sobbed and clung to his nephew, Ramez, who was trying to find out what had happened to his family. Later he would learn that they were dead or injured.

Another man dipped his hands in the blood and smeared it on his face. "Where is our government? Where is our president?" he cried.

Omar al-Atamna, who lost three brothers in the strike -- Mohammed, Arafat, 20, and Mehdi, 17 -- sat quietly beside the puddle, his eyes filling with tears when he was asked how he felt.

Israelis had occupied the tallest family apartment building for a day during the incursion and arrested some of his relatives, Omar Atamna said, but released them because they found no weapons or evidence against them.

"They have no excuse because they knew exactly who lived in the house," he said.

Zakaria al-Kafarna, whose sister lost a 10-year-old son, said he blamed the bombing in part on militants who fired rockets nearby. Anyone can come to the area and fire a rocket, he said. "What about us? We are sleeping."

Globe correspondent Ahmed Abu Hamdeh contributed to this report.