Gaza City, Gaza Strip – An Israeli airstrike on a top Palestinian rocket launcher and his accomplice also killed two children and six other civilians Tuesday, inflaming Palestinian anger already aroused over the deaths of Gaza beachgoers.
The violence coincided with bloody infighting among Palestinian gunmen and could hurt attempts by President Mahmoud Abbas and the West to pressure the Hamas government to moderate its virulently anti-Israel stance.
Abbas accused Israel of “state terrorism,” and the Islamic Jihad militant group vowed to avenge the death of its chief rocket launcher, Hamoud Wadiya.
An official Israeli inquiry, meanwhile, concluded Israel was not responsible for the blast that killed eight Gaza beachgoers Friday, rejecting Palestinian accusations that an Israeli artillery round was to blame.
The results of the probe, released Tuesday, concluded the blast was caused by an explosive buried in the sand, but it was not clear how it got there. Israel has claimed that Hamas militants planted the device to target Israeli commandos.
Palestinians angrily rejected the findings, saying militants were unlikely to plant bombs at a beach teeming with hundreds of people every weekend.
In recent months, volleys of homemade Palestinian rockets launched into southern Israel have provoked harsh Israeli artillery and airstrikes.
On Tuesday, Israel sent aircraft after militants it said were on their way to carry out a rocket attack on Israel.
A first missile missed the militants’ yellow van as it traveled along a main road in Gaza City and sent it crashing into a curb, Palestinian witnesses said. Two more missiles killed two militants inside the van as well as eight civilians, including two children, who had gathered near the site of the first strike.
