Israel pledged on Wednesday to investigate an air strike that devastated a residential area of the Gaza Strip, killing 14 Palestinians and a top militant and drawing fierce international criticism. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also said he intended to press on with talks with moderate Palestinians on easing the hardships of 700,000 Palestinians living under Israeli curfew in the West Bank and releasing frozen tax revenues to the Palestinians. Suicide bombers double up as biological weapons Nicosia: Flying bone fragments of suicide bombers could lead to spread of hepatitis and other diseases, Israeli doctors claim. While checking for metal fragments in the bodies of survivors of a recent suicide bombing using CT scans, Itzhak Braverman and colleagues at the Hillel Yaffe Medical Centre in Hadera, Israel, found dense bone fragments in the bodies. When Braverman sent a fragment to Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv for testing, the results were positive for hepatitis B. — ANI The gestures appeared designed to ease criticism as debate raged in Israel over the timing of Tuesday’s air raid, just as diplomacy was showing signs of making a breakthrough, and over the unusually large precision ‘‘smart bomb’’ used. ‘‘We shall investigate very clearly what went wrong and draw all the conclusions,’’ said Peres. But holding out hope for diplomacy despite the new tension, he said: ‘‘We are fighting terror, we are not fighting the Palestinian people, and whatever can make their lives more reasonable, easier, is our will and intention as well.’’ The air strike that killed Salah Shehada, commander of the military wing of the Islamic group Hamas, flattened his home. It also killed nine children, most of them in buildings nearby, in what the Palestinians called a war crime. Three of the children’s small bodies were pulled out of the rubble on Wednesday by workers wearing gloves and masks because of the stench. The youngest victim was two months old. Haim Ramon, chairman of parliament’s foreign affairs and Defence committee, said the buck stopped with the government. ‘‘Ultimately it was the military’s mistake, but it does not send an F-16 to a populated area without political authorisation,’’ said Ramon, a member of Peres’ Labour Party. Opposition leader Yossi Sarid of the Left-wing Meretz party said Israeli leaders had in the past vetoed similar operations because civilian casualties were likely. ‘‘There are things that a country simply cannot do unless it wants to risk committing state-sponsored terrorism,’’ Sarid wrote in Israel’s biggest selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. In new violence on Thursday, Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli motorist near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, the Army said. A coalition of militant groups called the Popular Army Front said in a statement that it was behind the attack.
