GAZA CITY, Jan 15: Israeli troops killed 17 Palestinians on Tuesday, among them the son of a top Hamas leader, as fighting erupted around the Gaza Strip a day after the start of key peace talks.
The deadliest single day of violence in months saw the son of Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar killed, while a civilian just inside Israel was shot dead in a rare sniper attack by militants in Gaza.
The fighting broke out a day after top Israeli and Palestinian negotiators began talks on core issues of their conflict, hot on the heels of US President George W. Bush’s visit and his prediction of a signed peace treaty within a year.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas branded the Gaza operation a ‘massacre’ and said it flew in the face of peace efforts.
“What happened today is a massacre, a slaughter against the Palestinian people,” Mr Abbas told reporters. “These massacres cannot bring peace.”
Hours after the operation Hamas claimed for the first time in several months that it had fired rockets into Israel. Witnesses and the army said that one projectile landed in the coastal city of Ashkelon and several in Sderot, without causing casualties.
The group said it had fired 11 rockets and eight Israelis were lightly wounded.
Hamas decreed three days of mourning and a general strike on Wednesday.
Several thousand people called for vengeance as they attended the funerals of those killed.
The operation saw Israeli tank crews exchange heavy fire with Palestinian fighters in eastern Gaza City, medics and witnesses said.
Among the dead were 13 members of Hamas’s armed wing, including Hossam Zahar, the son of former foreign minister Mahmud Zahar who vowed “to answer Israel in the only language that it knows.”
About 45 other Palestinians were wounded.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the operation had been launched because of rocket attacks on the country.
“This is the result, unfortunately, of the ongoing attacks against Israel from the Gaza Strip,” he said. “Over the last months there has been continuous firing of rockets and mortar shells against our civilian population.”—AFP
