Sounding a call to "rise up against settler dogs", thousands of Palestinians poured out their grief and defiance at the funeral yesterday of a three-month-old baby killed by suspected Israeli gunmen.
The Palestinian Authority appealed to G8 leaders to take an "urgent" decision to send monitors "to protect our people from the oppression of the occupation army and the brutal crimes conducted by the settler militias". The body of Diya' Tmeizi, the youngest victim in some 10 months of bloodshed, was wrapped in a tiny Palestinian flag and carried through the West Bank city of Hebron to his home village, Ithna. Only the boy's head, a red welt on his brow, was visible.
The US condemned as "barbaric" the attack in which two adult relatives were also killed when gunmen shot at the Tmeizi family car near Hebron on Thursday.
"Death to Israel. Death to America," the crowd chanted at the funeral. Thousands of Palestinians also marched in the West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah, calling for revenge.
The night-time attack prompted an appeal from the Palestinian Authority for foreign observers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a deployment rejected by Israel which condemned the shooting. Israel Radio said "The Committee for Road Safety" - a name alluding to the danger Jewish settlers face from Palestinian gunmen - claimed responsibility for the attack.
Israeli security sources said a group using that name, dating back to the 1980s, had carried out attacks in the past and had identified with the outlawed Jewish Kach movement campaigning to expel Arabs from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Asked if Jews carried out the shooting, the Israeli police chief in the West Bank, Mr Shahar Ayalon, told Army Radio: "That's what we think."
Mr Hilmi Tmeizi (17) one of the eight passengers in the family Peugeot, said he saw Jews in skullcaps shoot at them. A bullet hit him in the shoulder.
YESHA, the umbrella group representing settlers living on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, condemned the shooting as immoral.
But Kach activist Mr Noam Federman said his group had no harsh words for the attackers: "I don't see any moral problem with striking at Arabs just as Arabs find no moral fault in striking at Jews," he said.
The shooting occurred hours after foreign ministers of the Group of Eight meeting in Rome called on Israel and the Palestinians to let outside monitors oversee a the truce-to-talks plan.
A Palestinian was killed late last night in an Israeli shelling attack on the offices of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank town of Hebron, a Palestinian police source said.
Rajai Abu Rajab (35) was fatally hit apparently by shrapnel from a shell, the police source said, adding that an unknown number of people were also injured.