reportedly killed at least 23 Palestinians when they used helicopter gunships and tanks to fire on thousands of protesters in the Rafah refugee camp.
The Voice of America (VOA) quoted Palestinian officials and an Israeli reporter at the scene as saying that most victims were Palestinian school children, while Arab media said there were also women among those killed. Palestinian hospitals have confirmed 10 dead — all of them children, VOA said.
Israeli security officials were quoted as saying that troops fired at least "one helicopter missile and a tank shell" close to a crowd of an estimated 3,000 demonstrators as they marched towards Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighborhood to protest against ongoing Israeli attacks and the demolition of Palestinian homes.
The Israeli government says the military operation is aimed at destroying a network of weapons smuggling tunnels, which Israel says are located in local houses and traveling beneath the border into Egypt. However the well informed International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) said it had learned that militants of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas groups in the Tel-Sultan district have gone underground.
HOUSE SEARCHES
Israeli soldiers were seen moving from house to house, calling "on all terrorists" to turn themselves in, several reports said. A clearly frustrated President Bush, who as recently as Tuesday signaled his strong support for Israel, suggested he was expecting an explanation from Israel for the latest bloodshed.
"And we will get clarification from the government," he told reporters in Washington after a meeting with his Cabinet that reportedly focused on Iraq and the U.S. economy. "I have not had a chance to speak to the government, or be briefed, but I will continue to speak out about the need for all parties to respect innocent life in the Middle East."
President Bush stressed however that "it is essential that people respect innocent life in order for us to achieve peace." But those words seem to fall on dry ground, as Palestinian doctors struggled to cope with the many injured people.
HOSPITALS OVERWHELMED
"We cannot handle the situation, no hospital in the world can handle the situation," Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, the chief hospital spokesman, told Israeli media, the ICEJ News Service reported. The Palestinian Foreign Minister, Nabil Shaath, branded the Israeli attack "a massacre" and said the Palestinian leadership is considering taking its grievances before an international court.
Israeli Arab members of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, Mohammed Barakeh and Azmi Bishara denounced the operations
and called for international intervention. Bishara said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon should be face an international war crimes tribunal, the ICEJ News Service said.
However the prime minister’s spokesman Ra’anan Gissin told reporters that the bloodshed happened after a helicopter fired a flare to deflect any incoming anti-aircraft fire. At the same time Gissin apologized for the loss of innocent life, but said the Israeli military operation would not have been necessary if the Palestinian Authority had controlled the militants who he said use Rafah as a base for terrorist operations, the Cable News Network (CNN) reported.
Israeli officials have promised an investigation into the attacks, amid growing international anger. On Tuesday, Christian Aid, a Christian relief organization, expressed concern about the thousands of Palestinians made homeless in the recent Israeli operations which followed two major bomb blasts and related violence in Gaza which killed 13 soldiers.
