'Revenge, revenge' in Mideast

2003-10-21 08:18

Nusseirat Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip - Eleven Palestinians died in a series of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Monday, including eight in a refugee camp where Israeli helicopters targeted a car on the main street.

The Islamic movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad threatened revenge for the Israeli air strikes, but Israel's premier pledged more raids, further clouding Mideast peace efforts.

"The Israeli military will continue to act to foil terror attacks, capture murderers and liquidate terror organisations," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a speech to parliament.

The deadliest attack came after nightfall in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Residents said Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at the main street, destroying a car.

Residents said one of the dead was a doctor who was treating victims when a second missile struck.

Hundreds of camp residents carried charred pieces of the vehicle aloft and chanted, "Revenge, revenge."

A mistake

Israel's Channel 10 TV said that none of the dead were militants, characterising the refugee camp strike as a "mistake".

Also on Monday night, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a building in the Shajaiyeh neighbourhood of Gaza City, the same structure that was hit in an earlier air strike on Monday, residents said. Eleven people were wounded, they said. Israeli military sources said the attack was meant to finish the work of the first one.

The first three air strikes, a day after Palestinian militants fired eight home-made rockets from Gaza into Israel, destroyed two weapons labs and warehouses of Hamas, the military said. Four children and a 70-year-old woman were among 23 wounded. Two missiles exploded on a street crowded with schoolchildren.

In the first strike, Israeli warplanes bombed a building under construction in Gaza City that Israel said was a weapons site.

Less than three hours later, two missiles hit a white pickup truck. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the two men in the truck had tried to salvage explosives not destroyed in the initial air strike.

The two men in the truck and a bystander were killed, and 12 Palestinians were hurt, four seriously.

In the third attack, a missile destroyed a house on the outskirts of Gaza City. A second missile demolished a car parked nearby, Palestinian officials said.

About two thousand Palestinians took part in a funeral procession for the three people killed in the air strikes. No Hamas leaders attended the funeral.

Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad pledged to retaliate for Israel's attacks on Palestinians.

"The two movements agreed to confront the Zionist aggression on our people in Palestine and to urge all factions and resistance forces to co-ordinate among each other to confront this aggression," they said in a statement released in Beirut.

- AP