The United States has shyly joined the United Nations and the European Union in condemning the latest Israeli massacre against Palestinian in the Bureij Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip. Despite the criticism Washington added that Israel is entitled to what it calls self-defense. State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher who refused to comment on the genocide said that the White House has always said that Israel has to be fully aware of the consequences of their actions vis-à-vis civilian casualties. He added that Washington has also conveyed concerns to Tel Aviv vis-à-vis the demolition of Palestinian Houses for whatever reason. However, he also added that Palestinians have to take the initiative in ending the cycle of violence by reigning in resistance groups.

In New York, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a statement demanding the Israeli army exercise restraint and "refrain from the excessive and disproportionate use of deadly force in civilian areas."

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said it deplored the deaths of its local staff, including the female teacher and a man employed as a janitor at an UNRWA school.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana accused Israel of using "excessive force" in the raid.

MASSACRE OVERSHADOWS EID CELEBRATIONS

Ten Palestinians were killed when some 40 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, backed by helicopters, stormed the densely populated Gaza Strip refugee camp of Al-Breij.

The latest massacre came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon claimed Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network was operating in the Gaza Strip.

The deadly raid, as well as a failed arrest attempt in the West Bank in the evening in which a Palestinian resistance activist was shot dead, cast a pall over the celebrations for the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holidays.

"We are committed to the continuation of jihad (just war) and martyr operations until our land is liberated," members of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which lost two members of their armed wing and four members of their political section in the raid, shouted through loudspeakers at the cemetery.

When Israeli troops rolled out of the camp near Deir al-Balah around 5:00 am (0300 GMT), 19 Palestinians had also been wounded, five of them seriously, according to Palestinian medical sources.

Four members of the same family were killed when their house was hit by a tank shell, they added.

The occupation army said one of its soldiers was lightly wounded in the fierce gunbattles.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which runs the camp, also said two of its employees were among the dead and it would launch an investigation.

"I must condemn what appears to be the indiscriminate use of heavy firepower in a densely populated civilian area.

UNRWA will carry out a detailed inquiry into the deaths," UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen said in a statement.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, condemned the raid. "This is a new massacre and crime against our unarmed people," he told AFP.

According to witnesses, three Palestinians were killed by a helicopter-launched missile as they were fleeing their house around which a gunbattle had erupted.

HOUSE OF RESISTANCE LEADER DEMOLISHED

The house of Ayman Sheshniya, a senior resistance activist from the Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of local armed resistance groups, was dynamited by the Israeli occupation army during the incursion.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian Jihad resistance activist was shot dead and five other Palestinians, mostly young stone-throwers, were wounded by Israeli occupation troops in a failed arrest attempt in the northern West Bank Friday evening.

Abed al-Hady Zeyud, 21, was shot dead after about a dozen Israeli jeeps and tanks entered the village of Silat al-Harithiya, 10 kilometres (six miles) northwest of Jenin, to arrest him and clashed with the stone-throwers, Palestinian medical sources and a Jihad spokesman said.

Earlier in the West Bank, a Palestinian teenager was critically wounded by Israeli gunfire in Tulkarem, Palestinian witnesses and medical sources said.

The renewed violence comes two days after Sharon explained his vision for a future Palestinian state with provisional borders which would cover less than half the West Bank and three quarters of the Gaza Strip.

The move was seen as a ploy to erode the left-leaning Labour party's base ahead of general elections slated for January 28.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian boy stands next to a blown up house destroyed by Israeli occupation troops at Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, early December 6, 2002 (Oleg Popov/Reuter