JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - In the face of on-going international indifference, Israel in the space of two days openly admitted murdering 14 Palestininians including children, literally in cold blood and continued to boast that its so-called strategy of pre-emptive killings will go on unchecked until the people of Palestine and the international community with them, surrender to its will - illegally usurping and annexing Arab territory.
Shamelessly defending Israel's daily violation of the right to life, Raanan Gissin, a senior aide to prime minister Ariel Sharon, said Israel's occupation army was investigating the deaths of the two boys, which, he claimed, it ``deeply regretted.'' If the children were there, he implied, it was the falt of the Palestininians. Thousands of enraged Palestinians have meanwhile demonstrated across the West Bank and Gaza on Tuesday after Israeli occupationforces murdered eight people in an attack on Hamas headquarters in Nablus.(Read photo caption below)Two leaders of the Resistance Islamic movement and two children passing nearby were among those killed in the attack. At least 21 people were injured, hospital officials said.
A Palestinian policeman and a member of the Islamic Jihad group were also killed in the Gaza Strip, yielding the highest one-day death toll since a Palestinian bomber killed 21 Israelis outside a Tel Aviv disco two months ago.
In Ramallah, a West Bank city near Jerusalem, hundreds of demonstrators clashed with Israeli troops who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition, witnesses said. Palestinian snipers returned fire from nearby buildings.
Other demonstrations and clashes were reported in all of the main cities and towns of the West Bank and Gaza. About 50,000 people marched in Gaza City and 7,000 in Jenin, Reuters correspondents said.
HE DIES BY THE SWORD WHO LIVES BY IT
``The Israeli people will pay a heavy price,'' Hamas's spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said in Gaza after the attack. Thousands who gathered outside the Hamas building in Nablus immediately after the attack added their voices to his call for revenge. Others wept as bodies were carried away.
Medical officials said the two dead children, brothers aged eight and 10, had simply been in the wrong place when the attack was launched. Their parents were being treated for shock, a family friend said.
Doctors said the intense force of the blast blew the heads right off two men in the Hamas office. Medical teams combing through the debris used tweezers to collect tiny fragments of victims' flesh and bones.
The Palestinian Authority declared two days of mourning.
CALLS FOR INTERVENTION
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, speaking in Jordan after meeting King Abdullah, urged world leaders to send international monitors to the occupied territories.
The king urged President Bush in a telephone call to take steps to defuse the ``very dangerous'' situation.
Fourteen Palestinians have now died within two days in blasts that Palestinian officials blamed on Israel.
On Monday, Palestinians blamed Israel for a blast that killed six members of a military wing of Arafat's Fatah faction near Jenin. Israel denied any role and said the men might have set off a bomb accidentally.
The same day, seven policemen were wounded in a helicopter strike in Gaza City against a Palestinian police compound where Israel said mortar bombs were being made.
In Gaza on Tuesday, a member of the militant Islamic Jihad group was killed during what the group said was a clash with Israeli soldiers. The army denied any exchange of fire.
Palestinian officials said a Palestinian policeman had been killed in a separate incident as tanks pushed more than 500 yards into Palestinian-run territory near Gaza City.
At least 508 Palestinians, 130 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have died since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September. A truce brokered by the United States in June has yet to take hold.
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PHOTO CAPTION:
Palestinians carry a body away from an office of the militant group Hamas after it was hit by an explosion July 31, 2001. At least five Palestinians were killed in the explosion in an office of the Resistance Muslim group Hamas in the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses and ambulance workers said. (Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters