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Palestinians say Israeli tanks kill 19 in Gaza |
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Posted by -Chuck
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Wednesday, 08 November 2006 |
 GAZA CITY - Hamas' exiled political leader has vowed to retaliate after Israeli troops killed 19 Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children, during a military operation in northern Gaza, according to Palestinian medical sources.
"I call upon all resistance factions to activate their resistance programs," Khaled Mashaal said at a news conference in Syria, according to a translation from The Associated Press.
"The cowardly act of Zionists (Israelis) requires a legitimate Palestinian action. "We have big trust in our military wings, which will reply on this aggression and resist occupation and retaliate for those victims."
The bloodshed occurred early Wednesday with Israeli tanks poised just outside the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. The tanks fired 10 artillery rounds into the town's center and killed 19 people, the medical sources said.
Among the dead was a 13-member family which included seven children, the sources said. The other six killed were also civilians, they said.
Hamas' militant wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigade, issued a statement blaming the United States for the killings, and called on all Muslim nations "to teach the American enemy a harsh lesson."
"America provides the political material and logistical cover for the crimes of the Zionist occupation (Israel) and it is responsible, before the occupation (Israel), for the massacre of Beit Hanoun," the statement said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of the moderate Fatah party, called Wednesday's action "villainous massacres, savage massacres which Israel commits against the Palestinian people," according to an AP translation.
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