Israeli Tanks Shoot 8 Palestinians to Pieces

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”

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.