Israeli naval gunboats killed at least 10 Palestinian civilians yesterday and wounded about 40 others who were relaxing in the summer heat on a northern Gaza beach. Palestinian medical sources reported that the shelling wiped out the entire Ghalia family, including four children aged one, two, three and seven.
The military wing of Hamas responded by ending the fragile ceasefire it has maintained for the past 16 months. "We are going back to work, to fight," it said in a press statement. "The earth will shake in the Zionist cities. The only choice for these settlers will be to pack up and leave." Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, condemned the killings as a "bloody massacre", but the Hamas political leadership was slow to endorse its military wing's announcement.
Lt-Gen Dan Halutz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, suspended the shelling from land and sea, which had continued throughout the day in retaliation for Palestinian rocket fire into the Negev. Four rockets fell there yesterday, damaging property but causing no casualties. The army apologised for the incident, saying it "regretted the strike on innocent people". Maj-Gen Yoav Galant, the chief of southern command, ordered an investigation. "It is not our intention to harm innocent civilians," he said. One possibility, he suggested, was that a shell had strayed from its |