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Israeli aircraft rain missiles on Gaza

Israeli aircraft struck repeatedly at Palestinian rocket squads in northern Gaza yesterday, and in one botched attack killed a 12-year-old boy, his father and uncle.

Islamic militants, enraged by the deaths of 19 Palestinians a day earlier, bombarded southern Israel with rocket and mortar fire. Among the dead on Tuesday was the son of Gaza's most powerful leader, Mahmoud Zahar, and the Islamic group that controls the territory vowed to retaliate for the bloodshed.

The intensified clashes came on a day when a hawkish Israeli political faction weakened Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's political base by pulling out of his government, while potentially freeing his hand for greater concessions to the Palestinians.

"Negotiations on the basis of land for peace is a fatal mistake," Avigdor Lieberman told a news conference in Jerusalem in announcing the withdrawal of his hardline Yisrael Beiteinu Party.

The Palestinian civilians were killed in an Israeli air attack on a pickup truck east of Gaza City. The Popular Resistance Committees, a small, Hamas-allied faction, said the apparent target was its chief rocket maker, who was driving in the area in a similar vehicle at the time.

Relatives identified the dead as 12-year-old Amir Yazagi, his father Mohammed and uncle Amr, said Moaiya Hassanain of the Gaza health ministry. Their bodies were so mutilated that it was hard to identify them, medics said. Originally the medics thought the two men were militants because one was wearing a military-style jacket.

Major Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, acknowledged that the Yazagi family's vehicle was "unintentionally hit."

Civilians regrettably are hurt when militants operate in civilian environments, Leibovich said.

"It is important to me to stress that we have no intention whatsoever to hit or hurt uninvolved civilians," she said.

In border communities in southern Israel, the siren warning of rocket attacks rang repeatedly yesterday morning as 21 rockets and mortars were fired, the Israeli military said. No serious injuries or damage were reported.

Residents of Sderot, a town of that is a frequent target, stayed off the streets as sirens blared.

The Hamas government called a three-day mourning period for the 19 Palestinians killed on Tuesday, and a general strike took hold across the territory.

Palestinian flags were lowered to half-staff, verses from the Koran poured forth from mosque speakers, and government offices, banks and shops were shuttered. Students at the three leading universities didn't attend classes, but elementary and high school classes were unaffected.

Government offices and shops were also closed in the West Bank, which is controlled by Hamas' bitter rival, the moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Yesterday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the head of Gaza's Hamas government, Ismail Haniyeh, to express his condolences for the death of Zahar's son, Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu said.

The hardline Iranian leader accused US President George W. Bush of giving Israel his approval for military operations in Gaza during a peacekeeping mission to the region last week.

"Without the green light of the criminal Bush, yesterday's massacre would not have occurred," Ahmadinejad said, Nunu said.

In West Bank violence, Israeli troops killed the Islamic Jihad group's top commander in a predawn raid on the village of Qabatiya south of Jenin, the group said.
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