HIGHLIGHTS: Confusion Surrounds Fate of Attack Target, Salah Shehada of the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades||UN Blasts Israel over Civilian Deaths||Ereqat Describes Attack as 'Despicable War Crime'||Hamas Threatens Revenge|| STORY: Israel killed 11 people, including eight children, in an air strike on the home of the leader of the military wing of the Palestinian Resistance group Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, hospital officials said.

Confusion surrounded the fate of Salah Shehada, head of Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, which have killed dozens of Israelis in Resistance attacks since the start of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in September 2000.

Hamas officials initially said Shehada had been killed, but other spokesmen for the group later said he was alive, although he did not appear before crowds in Gaza.

Palestinian witnesses said an Israeli F-16 warplane fired a missile in Gaza City's Bouraj residential neighborhood, reducing five houses to rubble in a late-night attack.

Dazed residents stumbled through the dust and debris looking for loved ones as ambulance sirens wailed.

Officials at Gaza's Shifa Hospital said 11 people, including eight children, were killed in the air raid and about 100 wounded.
"This is a massacre against our people," Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a Hamas spokesman, told Reuters.

U.N. BLASTS ISRAEL OVER CIVILIAN DEATHS

At the United Nations, chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said Israel has a legal and moral responsibility to take all measures to avoid the loss of innocent life.

"It clearly failed to do so in using a missile against an apartment building," he said. "The secretary-general calls on the government of Israel to halt such actions and to conduct itself in a manner that is fully consistent with international humanitarian law."

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told the British Broadcasting Corporation that the attack was a "despicable" war crime that dealt a blow to peacemaking.

In Gaza City, hundreds of Hamas activists took to the street, firing in the air and chanting: "Where is the revenge of Qassam?"

They hugged when speakers told them Shehada was still alive.

Angry Palestinian crowds also held rallies in the Gazan towns of Rafah and Khan Younis.

The Israeli occupation army has killed dozens of resistance activists in targeted attacks, condemned worldwide.

Its killing, with a booby-trapped cellular phone, of top Hamas bombmaker Yehiya Ayyash in 1996, triggered a wave of revenge bombings in the Jewish state.

"Hamas's retaliation will come very soon, and there won't be only just one (attack)...After this crime, even Israelis in their homes will be the target of our operations," Rantissi said on Tuesday's attack.

Palestinian bombers have largely targeted buses and public places in Israel, and many Israelis now feel safe only in their homes.

Palestinian security sources said Shehada was at the top of Israel's most-wanted list. Israeli occupation authorities said he was a founder of Hamas's military wing and a main strategist of its attacks against Israelis.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinians remove the dead body of a Palestinian woman from her house after it was hit by fire from an Israeli warplane during an attack on Gaza City July 22, 2002. Israel launched an air strike in Gaza City, leveling several houses in an attack that witnesses said had killed several people and buried others under rubble. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)