In one of the bloodiest days of the 10-month Palestinian uprising, eight Palestinians, including a militant Islamic leader and two children, were killed yesterday in an Israeli helicopter strike on an office of the Hamas movement in the West Bank.
The attack elicited a furious US condemnation and raised the spectre of revenge attacks by Islamic militants.
The overall Palestinian death toll yesterday was 11, with a policeman and an Islamic Jihad militant killed in the Gaza Strip in clashes with Israeli troops.
A Palestinian suspected of collaboration with Israel was killed late yesterday by masked men in the West Bank village of Beit Sahur near Bethlehem, Palestinian sources said. The victim, Mr Jamal Shahin (57), was gunned down in his home, the sources said.
A combat helicopter fired three missiles through the window of the Hamas office, located on the third floor of a seven-storey block in the West Bank city of Nablus. Among the dead was Jamal Mansour, a leading Hamas activist in the West Bank and the likely target of the aerial strike.
The two children, brothers Ashraf and Bilal Khader, aged eight and 10, were killed by shrapnel while walking on the street outside.
The US deplored the attack, saying it was "excessive, provocative" and a gross violation of the ceasefire agreement brokered by the CIA chief, Mr George Tenet.
A State Department spokesman, Mr Charles F. Hunter, said the US continued "to strongly oppose the Israeli policy of targeted attacks, which, in this instance, has led to the deaths of innocent civilians. We deeply regret and strongly deplore the killing of civilians."
Shortly after the strike, the Israeli government issued a statement, saying it had ordered the strike and accusing the Hamas activists who were killed of being responsible for a spate of terror attacks inside Israel.
The government statement also expressed "deep regret" for the deaths of the two children.
The Israeli Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, said the men killed had been responsible for the single most deadly attack since the start of the intifada, a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on June 1st, in which 23 Israelis were killed, almost all of them teenagers. "We saved the lives of maybe hundreds of people today," he said.
Mr Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo agreements and a strident critic of the government, warned that the assassinations would only escalate the violence.
"There's no end to this," he said. "We have to get back to the negotiating table."
That was the last thing on Palestinian minds. Hamas members immediately vowed revenge. "I urge all the brigades to chase and target the Israeli political leaders and members of parliament, the killer [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and the criminal [Foreign Minister] Shimon Peres," declared AbdelAziz Rantissi, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, in the first public call by the Islamic movement to target Israeli leaders.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat said the attack underscored the need for international observers in the territories to protect his people.
"I refer the steps (that should be taken) to the Arab and Islamic nations and to the G8 summit to implement its resolution as soon as possible and send international observers," he said.