I link here because I read all the news. In my very humble opinion, mistakes like these need to be addressed -- don't tell me the U.S. has no business offering opinions on foreign strategies now. Sometimes if you take care of problems when they are small, they don't grow. Sometimes when you recognize tactics don't work, you change course. Many problems are linked. Meanwhile, back in Gaza.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi
1 hour, 43 minutes ago

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza (Reuters) - Israeli artillery shells killed 18 civilians in a town in northern Gaza on Wednesday, the deadliest strike in the territory in four years, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.

"We saw legs, we saw heads, we saw hands scattered in the street," said Attaf Hamad, 22, in Beit Hanoun, a town in the northern Gaza Strip that has been a launching ground for Palestinian militants' rocket attacks on Israel.

Some of the dead were killed in bed as shells struck seven houses, and others rushed outside, finding no safety.

Thirteen members of one extended family were killed and the dead included seven children and four women, residents and the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the killings as a "horrible and ugly massacre." A senior Hamas official urged Palestinians to attack inside Israel in response, and the Islamic Jihad group vowed to carry out suicide bombings.

Hamas's armed wing, decrying Washington's "political and financial support" for Israel, appeared to call on Palestinians to attack U.S. targets, urging them in a statement "to teach the American enemy harsh lessons."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said he and Defense Minister Amir Peretz "voiced regret over the deaths of Palestinian civilians ... and offered emergency humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority and medical care for the wounded."

Peretz ordered an investigation and a halt to shelling in Gaza until its completion, the prime minister's office said.

A military spokeswoman said Israeli forces had fired shells at north Gaza in response to rockets being launched at Israel. Israeli media said an artillery battery had missed its target, a rocket-firing site about a kilometer (half a mile) from the town. The spokeswoman could not confirm this.