Middle East: An Israeli air strike yesterday on a van carrying militants in the Gaza Strip killed 10 Palestinians, eight of them civilians, bringing to 15 the number of civilians killed in Gaza since Friday, and eliciting threats from armed groups to carry out attacks inside Israel.
The rising civilian toll - seven Palestinians were killed in a blast on Gaza Beach last Friday - is complicating efforts by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to promote a plan he hopes will serve as the basis for renewed peace talks with Israel.
After yesterday's strike, he accused Israel of "state terrorism". The first missile fired yesterday by an Israeli aircraft missed the yellow van travelling on a busy Gaza street, but sent it careening into the pavement. A second missile fired at the vehicle killed the two militants inside and also hit a group of people who had gathered at the site. Two children and three medical workers were among the dead.
The Israeli army said the van targeted had been carrying missiles with a longer range than the makeshift Qassam rockets usually fired by militants into Israel. Video footage of the scene taken just after the missile strike showed a man removing a rocket from the back of the van.
Israeli defence minister Amir Peretz, speaking some hours before yesterday's strike, said Israel would "act with all our might and use all our means against any group that acts against us". Mr Peretz lives in the southern town of Sderot, which has been hardest hit by the makeshift rockets fired from Gaza. The rockets - the military said some 100 had been fired into Israel since Friday - have not caused a large number of casualties, but serve as a psychological weapon, having terrified Sderot residents.
Mr Abbas yesterday accused Israel of trying to "wipe out the Palestinian people Every day there are martyrs, there are wounded people, all of them innocents," he said. "What Israel is committing is state terrorism."
Israeli military chiefs announced yesterday that an inquiry into the Gaza Beach blast had determined that it was not caused by a wayward Israeli shell, but most likely by an explosive device buried in the sand. The inquiry did not determine whether the device had been planted by Palestinians or was an old Israeli device.
An incensed Saeb Erekat, a former senior negotiator with Israel, said the Palestinians were demanding an international investigation.
The civilian deaths could harden Palestinian opinion against Mr Abbas's efforts to re-engage Israel around the negotiating table. He is trying to force Hamas to accept a plan for a Palestinian state along 1967 borders - a move that implies recognition of the Jewish state.