Wednesday August 1 8:25 AM ET

Palestinians Rage, Israel Defiant After Missiles

By Atef Sa'ad

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian mourners screamed for revenge on Wednesday after Israel killed eight Palestinians, including two children, in a missile strike it defended as an operation to save Israeli lives.

The attack on Tuesday on the office of a top official of the militant Hamas group, a movement that has carried out bombings in Israel, was described by Washington as ``excessive.'' The Palestinian Authority called it a massacre.

But Israeli political sources said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had decided at a five-hour meeting with top ministers to continue the killings of Palestinian militants.

``We had all the justification in the world, in the sense of 'If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first','' said Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey, the Israeli army's chief spokesman, invoking Jewish religious teachings.

Israel said the high-profile Hamas official it killed, Jamal Mansour, was part of a Hamas command responsible for a long series of deadly attacks, including a Tel Aviv disco suicide bombing that killed 21 people, mainly youngsters, on June 1.

Raanan Gissin, a senior aide to Sharon, said the group was known to have been planning new operations aimed at Jerusalem, where a high security alert is in effect and a pipe bomb exploded in a park on Wednesday, causing no casualties.

CALLS FOR REVENGE

In Nablus, tens of thousands of Palestinians chanting ''Revenge, revenge'' and ``Death to Israel'' marched in an emotional funeral procession for the eight dead.

Some of the mourners fired shots in the air amid cries for a jihad, or holy struggle, against Israel.

``Our children are dying under the shoes of the Israeli soldiers and (Arab leaders) are sleeping in their chairs,'' one mourner lamented.

The killing of the two children, who were walking past Mansour's office when the missiles struck, was an acute embarrassment for Israel.

Wrapped in traditional Arab headdresses, the pale and still slightly bloody faces of the eight- and 10-year-old brothers, Bilal and Ashraf Khalil, peeked out of the Palestinian flags used as their burial shrouds.

The six men were buried in green religious banners after being carried aloft on stretchers.

Israel expressed regret at the deaths of the two boys and said an investigation was under way. But almost in the same breath, Gissin accused Hamas of allowing children into volatile areas for use as ``human shields.''

Israeli left-wing opposition leader Yossi Sarid appealed for greater caution by government strategists.

``It would take a miracle, under these circumstances, not to also harm women and children -- and you just can't rely on miracles,'' Sarid wrote in a front-page commentary in the mass circulation Yedioth Ahronoth.

``That's why, instead of being sorry and then apologizing, the thinking from the start has to be more cautious, measured and responsible,'' he wrote.

U.S. CONDEMNATION

President Bush spoke to King Abdullah of Jordan by telephone and told reporters the United States urged the parties to reduce the violence.

State Department spokesman Charles Hunter called the Israeli attack ``a new and dangerous escalation of violence.''

``The Israeli action today was excessive. This attack...is highly provocative and makes efforts to restore calm much more difficult,'' he said. The United States brokered a cease-fire in mid-June that never took hold.

The Palestinian Authority, which has accused Israel of assassinating some 60 Palestinian activists since September, declared two days of mourning.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat urged world leaders to send international monitors to the occupied territories.

Hamas's spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin warned that Israelis would pay ``a heavy price'' for the attack.

At least 508 Palestinians, 130 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have died since a Palestinian uprising against occupation began in September after peace talks became deadlocked.

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