http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2005-09/23/article06.shtmlSmoke rises moments after a powerful blast ripped through a crowd of Hamas supporters.
Click to watch more photos In its latest but most blatant violation of the shaky truce, Israeli warplanes bombarded a mass rally organized by thousands of Hamas supporters in northern Gaza on Friday, September 23, killing at least 19 people, including two children, and wounding 80 others.
Palestinian witnesses said Israeli aircraft fired four missiles at the rally in Jabalya refugee camp, reported Al-Jazeera news channel.
Other witnesses reported seeing an Israeli military drone in the sky hours before, according to Reuters.
Body parts were scattered on the ground and the vehicle that carried the Hamas fighters was found charred. Thousands of Palestinians stormed the streets of the camp, carrying the wounded and shouting for revenge.
The explosion ripped through the camp just as one of the main leaders of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, was to address the crowd.
The Palestinian Interior Ministry put the death toll at 19, adding that first indications suggest the blast was caused by Hamas explosives packed into the car.
The Israeli army denied involvement in the deadly blast, the first in Gaza since it completed the withdrawal of all its troops on September.
Israeli Crime
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas blamed the massacre on the Israeli occupation forces.
“I was an eyewitness and saw Israeli warplanes fire four missiles at the rally,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zahri told Al-Jazeera news channel.
“Our doctors found this small tracking and explosive plate inside the body of one of the martyrs,” Nizar Rayan, a prominent Hamas leader, told a press conference, showing the device to the cameras.
“Such a technology is far advanced for us,” he stressed, suggesting the device was Israeli-made.
He also refuted suggestions that the blasts were triggered by Hamas’s own explosives.
“All rockets and explosive charges used in the rally, just like all rallies, are only ballistic models and not real weapons,” an angry Rayan told reporters.
“Every body familiar with such rallies knows for a fact that Hamas never showcase real weapons.”
The Hamas leader also lashed out at the Palestinian Interior Ministry for rushing to exonerate Israel.
“How could it (the ministry) issue four statements on the incident without even bothering to visit the attack site,” Rayan fumed.
He said one of those killed in the Israeli strike was Assad Abdel Qader Mohammad Al-Rayan, a local leader of Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Truce Reconsidered
Sheikh Hassan Youssef, a leading Hamas figure, stressed that the Palestinian resistance groups would reconsider the truce they have been abiding by for months.
“The factions were committed to the cooling off period but what the Israeli occupation forces perpetrated marks a grave, unacceptable development,” he told Al-Jazeera.
“The Palestinian people must not remain hand folded vis-