France condemns Gaza incident and Kassam firing

"France condemns the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, which represents a violation of international human rights and, particularly, the Geneva conventions," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on Wednesday in Paris after an apparently misfired IDF artillery shell killed at least 18 Palestinian civilians in Beit Hanun. "We also condemn the continued firing of rockets into Israeli territory, as well as the calls for a renewal of suicide bombings," Douste-Blazy said. Both Hamas and Fatah have called for renewed suicide bomb attacks against Israel as retaliation for the artillery attack. "As we have always said, violence threatens to pull the region into a dangerous escalation," the French foreign minister warned.