Amid growing chaos in the Palestinian territories, Israeli rockets blew up a car carrying a senior militant in the Gaza Strip yesterday, killing 11 Palestinians in the worst anti-terror airstrike in four years.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the attack – which killed two children – as “state terrorism.”
The incident came as Israel intensified efforts to end an escalation in cross-border rocket attacks while Abbas’ gunmen struggled with Hamas for control of Gaza.
The airstrike occurred in the outskirts of Gaza City when an Israeli missile destroyed a car carrying Islamic Jihad’s chief rocket-launcher, Hamoud Wadiya, and an aide, as they headed toward a new artillery attack on Israel, officials said.
The car was loaded with equipment designed to fire a Grad rocket, more powerful than the 100 homemade Qassam rockets that have rained down on Sderot and other Israeli towns since Friday, an official said.
Witnesses said a second rocket struck the area as a crowd gathered and rescuers arrived.
Palestinian officials said 30 people were injured. They said three of the 11 dead were medical workers on their way to tend to the wounded.
Islamic Jihad vowed swift reprisals.
“Today we have said farewell to our martyrs and tomorrow Israel will say farewell to their dead,” the terror group said in a statement.
At the hospital’s morgue, angry women shouted, “Death to Israel! Death to the occupation!” One Islamic Jihad ghoul put his hands on one of the bodies, then smeared the blood on his rifle.
Dozens of gunmen fired in the air as families began taking bodies from the morgue to the mosque for funeral services.
In other developments:
* Members of Abbas’ Fatah party set fire to two Hamas offices in the West Bank towns of Salfit and Qalqilya while Fatah gunmen fired at a facility belonging to Hamas in Nablus. No casualties were reported.
* The only Christian member of the Hamas-led government, Tourism Minister Judeh Muqos, quit, blaming Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence.
* Israel said it had transferred 375 automatic rifles and bullets to Abbas’ presidential guard. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in Paris, said the arms were donated by Jordan and will help Abbas’ forces “impose law and order on Hamas.”
* Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, who lives near the targeted town of Sderot, said previous restraints on Israeli retaliation are eased.
“We will act with all our might and use all our means against any group that acts against us,” he said.
* The normally soft-spoken Abbas said the Gaza airstrike was proof Israel is trying to “wipe out the Palestinian people.”
“Every day there are martyrs, there are wounded people, all of them innocents, all of them bystanders,” he said. “They want to eliminate the Palestinian people, but we are going to sit tight.” With Post Wire Services