They agreed that the group hit was unarmed and was watching the firefighters at work.Marwan Abu Shamales, aged 49, said he came out of his house after he believed the troops had withdrawn to see what had happened to the nearby building was in flames.”When the fire engines arrived and started working to control the fire the sound of an explosion was heard and I felt like flames were cutting into my leg,” Mr Shamales said, as he was treated for shrapnel injuries in his hand and side, and searched everywhere for his two sons who were with him at the time.”I started screaming and I fell down. My bad luck was I fell on the two legs of a dead man and it covered my face with blood. I will never forget this disgusting scene,” he added.Doctors at the hospital said most of the injuries they treated were caused by tank shell shrapnel.”Until now, we have 11 killed and more than 100 wounded, among them 30 are in very critical condition, in a new massacre committed against the citizens of Jabalya,” said Dr. Moawia Hassanen, chief of emergency services at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat condemned the army’s raid into Jabalya, calling it the “Israeli government’s revenge” for the suicide bombing in Haifa yesterday.”We hold the Israeli government fully responsible for such acts of revenge,” he said. “We urge President Bush to reshift his focus from war on Iraq to helping the Palestinians and Israelis break this vicious cycle.”Earlier, two other Palestinians were killed during the army’s operation in Gaza, whenthe army blew up two buildings, including one belonging to a Hamas activist.A Reuters TV cameraman and photographer were among the wounded..

A few years ago Mary Bull was a corporate executive earning $150,000 (£95,000) a year. Last Friday, she was one of a group of masked women, called the Mourning Mothers, who wrapped dolls symbolising dead Iraqi babies in a giant Union Jack and handed them to the British consulate in San Francisco in protest against the looming military showdown with Saddam Hussein. Most recently, she has diverted her energy into the campaign to prevent a war in the Middle East and spends most of her time organising a grassroots organisation called Direct Action to Stop the War.”The public is not going to roll over and play dead any more,” she says. “We’re awake, and planning to let everyone know it.”Her own awakening, she says, has been mirrored by hundreds of thousands of others across the United States and millions across the Western world who have been shaken out of their humdrum daily lives by indignation at the threat of an unprovoked US invasion of Iraq.

“We’re talking soccer mums and matronly housewives,” said Ms Bull.”Almost everyone involved is new to activism. When 50 people opposed to the war turned out last October to close down the federal building in San Francisco, none of them had been involved in civil disobedience before. We trained them the night before, and then they went ahead.”Lack of energy is clearly not a problem for the burgeoning anti-war movement. Starting in October, wave after wave of protest has attracted ever larger crowds on to the streets.

During the weekend of 15-16 February about 10 million people turned out globally to protest against the push for war, with principal events in London and New York.Street demonstrations are only one aspect of a multi-faceted protest movement. One day last week, tens of thousands of people bombarded the switchboard of the White House and other US government offices with protest calls and e-mails, an initiative known as the Virtual March on Washington, which halted much business in the capital.On Monday night, more than 700 theatre groups in 42 countries led co-ordinated readings of the Aristophanes anti-war comedy Lysistrata. Later, in an initiative called Books not Bombs, high school and college students across the United States walked out of their classrooms. In Italy, hundreds of protesters have just spent a week blocking trains carrying US weapons and personnel on their way to a military base outside Pisa and Italian dockers have staged work stoppages rather than load arms shipments destined for the Gulf. There have been repeated demonstrations at Shannon airport in Ireland, used as a refuelling stop for American military planes, and last Saturday 10 people were arrested for breaching an airport fence.Nine activists recently had to be pulled off the gates of a US military building in Rotterdam. There were further protests outside two American bases in Germany and at RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire.