Eight Palestinians were killed Tuesday and seven were injured after Israeli army tanks fired shells at the town of Beit Lahya in northern Gaza Strip. Witnesses said that at around 7:00 a.m. local time, as pupils were on their way to school and farmers headed to their fields, an Israeli tank shell hit the main street of the small town.The tank attack reportedly came after militants fired homemade rockets at the northern Jewish settlement of Nisanette. Palestinian medics at Kamal Odwan Hospital in northern Gaza said the bodies of eight Palestinians had been brought to the hospital, including four children under the age of 17 and four farmers. Four of the dead were from a single family. The field, where farmers had been harvesting strawberries, was spattered with blood and body parts. Shortly after the attack, Palestinian presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas called Israel “the Zionist enemy” for the first time, saying, “We are praying for the souls of our martyrs who fell today to the shells of the Zionist enemy.” In recent days, Palestinian officials have charged that recent Israeli army incursions threatened to disrupt the election for a successor to Yasser Arafat.