ISLAMIC militant group Hamas called off a 16-month-old truce with Israel on Friday after attacks blamed on Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians, including three children playing on a beach. Israel's army, which had been shelling northern Gaza to curb rocket fire by militants, said it was investigating the deaths.
Hamas, in charge of the Palestinian government, threatened to renew attacks on the Jewish state. The group, sworn to destroying Israel, carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings in an uprising before agreeing to cease fire early in 2005. Renewed violence could bury Western hopes of pressuring Hamas to soften its stand. But a senior official from President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah said he still planned to go ahead with a referendum on a statehood proposal implicitly recognising Israel. Hamas rejects it. "The Israeli massacres represent a direct opening battle," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement echoed by its political leaders. "The earthquake in the Zionist cities will resume and the herds of occupiers have no choice but to prepare the coffins or the departing luggage."
There was no immediate comment on Hamas's announcement from Israel, or from Abbas, locked in a power struggle with the Islamists. Palestinian officials said Israeli air strikes and artillery fire killed 10 Palestinians in Gaza, the highest Palestinian toll in a single day since 2004. Seven people, including five from the same family, were killed in what Palestinian officials said was Israeli shellfire from boats on to a crowded beach. Among the dead were three children, aged 1, 3 and 10. Their sister, who had been swimming, survived. Twenty people were wounded. Covered in blood, children screamed as adults carried the wounded and dead from the sand. |