ISRAEL denied responsibility yesterday for the explosion on a Gaza beach last week that killed eight Palestinian holidaymakers, but failed to offer an alternative explanation for the tragedy.

Speaking shortly after another airstrike left 11 Palestinians dead, including two children, Amir Peretz, the Israeli Defence Minister, said: “The accumulating evidence proves that (Friday’s) incident was not due to Israeli forces.”

Flanked by Dan Halutz, the Chief of Staff and Major General Meir Kalifi, Mr Peretz was presenting the results of the official inquest into last Friday’s carnage on the beach.

After showing slides and detailing Israel’s version of the timings, Major General Kalifi, who led the investigation, said that the blast took place between 4.57pm and 5.10pm, a few minutes after Israeli artillery finished firing.

He also said that the size and shape of the blast crater, according to aerial photography, was not consistent with Israel’s 155mm artillery, and that shrapnel recovered from Palestinian victims in Israeli hospitals cleared Israel: “The probability that one Israeli shell hit at this point is close to nothing.”

One military official suggested that the most likely cause was a Hamas beach mine, planted to foil Israeli commandos.

However, sceptics noted that the Israeli team did not visit the site. They also pointed out that a mine would have had to remain intact for hours on a beach trampled by Palestinian holidaymakers, only to explode after Israel began shelling the area.

Numerous onlookers said that the fatal shell was the third in a series of about five, the first two landing just north of the picnic site and prompting the Ghalia family and other bathers to begin packing up.

The Times found two other identical fresh craters nearby, roughly where the witnesses indicated. After carrying out an independent inspection, Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst with Human Rights Watch, said yesterday that he was “quite certain” that the Israeli findings were wrong.

Mr Garlasco, a former Pentagon official and specialist in battle damage assessment, produced shrapnel that he recovered from the beach marked “55MM”.

“It is highly likely that it was an artillery-delivered 155mm shell,” he said. Mines tended to cause lower body injuries, whereas most of the victims suffered head and upper torso wounds, he added.

“We have to look at all the possibilities, but all the evidence points to a 155mm shell fired by the Israelis as what killed the Palestinians on the beach.”

Hamas also poured scorn on the new Israeli version. “This is an Israeli lie and an attempt to escape moral responsibility for the massacre of a completely innocent family,” Khalid Abu Hilal, a spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian Interior Ministry, said.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, reacted with puzzlement last night to the Israeli explanation. “To find a mine on the beach is rather odd,” he said.

Yesterday’s airstrike, the deadliest such attack in many months, was aimed at Islamic Jihad militants travelling in a Volkswagen van in Gaza city.

Witnesses said that the vehicle lurched down the road after the first blast only to be destroyed by a second missile, which killed two of the targets and nine civilians.

The civilian casualties in- cluded three medical workers from a nearby hospital who rushed to help after the first missile struck, only to be hit by the second, and two children whose home was sprayed with shrapnel.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, condemned the latest attack as “state terrorism”.

The Israel Defence Forces said that the van was “loaded with rockets and carrying a terrorist cell en route to launch rockets at Israel”.

Times Recommends

• Both sides blame US for worsening relations
• Stieg Larsson: losing the plot over his cash
• Odd creature paralysed by incompatible parts