AMMAN, June 10: Israel faced international condemnation on Saturday over the death of seven Palestinians, including three children, killed by shellfire on a Gaza beach.

In Amman, where Jordan’s King Abdullah met Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week to discuss the Middle East peace process, the Jordanian government called Friday’s killings by Israeli artillery fire a ‘crime’.

“The Israeli escalation against the Palestinians does not help in creating climates of trust between the two sides and will increase tensions,” the official Petra news agency quoted government spokesman Nasser Jawdeh as saying.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has declared three days of mourning for the victims, five of whom were members of a single family killed as they were enjoying a day on the beach.

The United States voiced ‘its regret for the killing and wounding of innocent Palestinians’, while urging both sides to show restraint ‘and avoid all actions that could exacerbate tensions further’, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said late on Friday.

The French government called the Israeli bombardments of Gaza a ‘disproportionate’ use of force, a view shared by Moscow which added that ‘what happened was an unacceptable’, a Russian foreign ministry statement said.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora warned that verbal condemnation was not sufficient ‘in the face of continuing Israeli barbarism’.

He called for ‘the immediate opening of an international investigation into this crime which has no reason, logic or justification’, Mr Siniora said in a statement.

Calls for international action were echoed in Tehran, where Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki met his Palestinian counterpart Mahmud al-Zahar on Saturday.

Iran condemned ‘the savage Zionist regime’s crime in killing innocent Palestinians’, said foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, calling on the United Nations to conduct a ‘serious’ inquiry, according to the state news agency IRNA.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan himself also endorsed the need for an investigation, saying he was ‘deeply disturbed’ over the killings, according to his spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Friday.

From Turkey, Israel’s main ally in the region, came the message to punish those responsible for the attack on Palestinian civilians, after Israel said it regretted what happened and would suspend shelling while conducting its own inquiry.—AFP