Even though the Israeli military outspokenly stressed upon the troop withdrawal from a series of Gaza Strip towns on Tuesday - following the six-day military incursion deemed to have been the most violent of the ones conducted by Israel in Gaza in a year - Palestinian security officials announced on Wednesday that a series of massive killings were recorded in Beit Hanoun today, when 18 civilians, including women and children, died, Reuters informs.

The officials reported that Israeli servicemen shot four gunmen, believed to have been Hamas members, and a civilian in the West Bank, following a sweeping raid in the city of Jenin, located in the northern part of the occupied territory. In addition to this, the spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry, Khaled Rabi, stressed upon the fact that four women and seven children represented the casualties left behind by a renewed wave of Israeli shelling in Beit Hanoun, while 40 others were seriously injured.

Even though the Israeli army could not confirm the reports, since it had not been aware of such military operations in the area, Palestinian eye witnesses highlighted that the Israeli army had attacked seven Palestinian residences. "It is the saddest scene and images I have ever seen. We saw legs, we saw heads, we saw hands scattered in the street. I saw people coming out of a house covered in blood. I started screaming to wake up the neighbours", a 22 year old man, Attaf Hamad declared in an interview with Reuters.

The series of dramatic events prompted Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas senior leader Ismail Hanyieh call for an urgent meeting of the United Nations to find a compromise solution as soon as possible, since this "massacre" - as he labeled it - cannot be tolerated. As a sign of protest, the official announced that all talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the establishment of a national unity government would be frozen for the time being.