Seven people, including three children, have been killed by Israeli shells which hit a beach in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials say.
At least 30 people were wounded in the shelling, they say.

The Israeli military says it has halted all shelling of Gaza and has launched an inquiry into whether ground-based artillery could have been involved.

Four other people were also killed in separate Israeli air strike in northern Gaza on Friday, Palestinians said.

The incidents come a day after senior Palestinian official Jamal Abu Samhadana was killed in an Israeli air strike in Rafah, the southern Gaza.

We know it's not from the air force and not from the navy and we are checking if it was artillery [fire]. We also don't know for certainty if it was Israeli fire

Israeli army spokesman Jacob Dallal

Samhadana - the founder of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) - was buried in Rafah on Friday, with thousands of mourners pledging to avenge his death.

Samhadana was one of Israel's most wanted men in Gaza, and his group has been blamed for a series of missile attacks on Israel.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israeli strikes in Gaza.

"What the Israeli occupation forces are doing in the Gaza Strip constitutes a war of extermination and bloody massacres against our people," Mr Abbas said in a statement carried by the Palestinian official Wafa news agency.

UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said London was "deeply concerned by reports of the deaths from Israeli shelling of civilians, including children, on a Gaza beach".

"The killing of innocent civilians is utterly unacceptable and we urge the Israelis to undertake an investigation into this incident," Ms Beckett said.

Devastation

Palestinian officials say the seven people killed on the Gaza Strip beach included two women as well as the three children.

The first television pictures revealed a terrible scene, the BBC's Alan Johnston says.

TV pictures suggest a family was on a picnic when the disaster struck

At least four figures lay unconscious on the ground, possibly dead, our correspondent says.

A little further away, a man was lying on a sand dune, perhaps fatally injured, while a child stood looking on in utter horror, our correspondent says.

He says around the casualties were tables and chairs, and it looks very much as if this was a family enjoying their Friday afternoon off on the beach when disaster struck.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. troops conducted 39 raids late Thursday and early Friday based on information gleaned from searches in the hours after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death. Fearing that insurgents will seek revenge, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki imposed driving bans in Baghdad and in restive Diyala province, where the terrorist was killed.

Terrorist leader al-Zarqawi was still alive and mumbling after U.S. airstrikes on his hideout and tried to get off a stretcher when he saw American troops nearby, a top military official said Friday. The al-Qaida leader could barely speak when Iraqi police arrived at the scene of Wednesday's attack.

``He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short,'' U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a news conference.

Later, U.S. and Polish forces intending to provide unspecified medical treatment put al-Zarqawi on a stretcher, Caldwell said. The terrorist ``attempted to sort of turn away off the stretcher, everybody reached to insert him back. ... He died a short time later from the wounds suffered during the air strike.

``We did in fact see him alive,'' Caldwell said. ``There was some sort of movement he had on the stretcher and he did die a short time later. There was confirmation from the Iraqi police that he was found alive.''

Caldwell said it was unclear whether al-Zarqawi was trying to get away as he made movement on the stretcher.

But earlier, in an interview with Fox News, Caldwell suggested that al-Zarqawi was trying to escape in the final moments of his life.

``He was conscious initially, according to the U.S. forces that physically saw him,'' Caldwell said. ``He obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realizing it was the U.S. military.

U.S. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said at the time that the American airstrike targeted ``an identified, isolated safe house.'' Four other people, including a woman and a child, were killed with al-Zarqawi and Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, the terrorist's spiritual consultant.

Revising what military officials said Thursday, Caldwell said it now appears there was no child among those killed in the bombing. He cautioned that some facts were still being sorted out.

He said three women and three men, including al-Zarqawi, were killed.

Hours after al-Zarqawi's death, U.S. troops carried out 17 simultaneous raids Wednesday around the location of his safe house near Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province. The region is in the heartland of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and has seen a recent rise in sectarian violence. Baqouba is 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Those raids provided the information leading to the searches overnight Thursday.

In the 39 raids, troops ``picked up things like memory sticks, some hard drives'' that would allow American forces to begin dismantling al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq, Caldwell told the British Broadcasting Corp.

He said the latest information was helping U.S. forces unravel the source of al-Qaida's weapons and financing.

In announcing al-Zarqawi's death, Caldwell said the 17 raids ``produced a tremendous amount of information,'' which he described as a ``treasure trove.'' He also said they waited to kill al-Zarqawi before carrying out the other raids, in an apparent effort not to spook the Jordanian-born terrorist.

``We had identified other targets that we obviously did not go after to allow us to focus on al-Zarqawi. Now that we got him, we will go after them,'' Caldwell told the BBC.

As Iraqi and U.S. leaders cautioned that al-Zarqawi's death was not likely to end the bloodshed in Iraq, Caldwell said another foreign-born militant was already poised to take over the terror network's operations.

He said Egyptian-born Abu al-Masri would likely take the reins of al-Qaida in Iraq. He said al-Masri trained in Afghanistan and arrived in Iraq in 2002 to establish an al-Qaida cell.

The U.S. military did not further identify al-Masri and his real identity could not immediately be determined. But the Central Command has listed an Abu Ayyub al-Masri as among its most wanted al-Zarqawi associates and placed a $50,000 bounty on his head.

Al-Masri, whose name is an obvious alias meaning ``father of the Egyptian,'' is believed to be an expert at constructing roadside bombs, the leading cause of U.S. military casualties in Iraq.

The midday driving ban in Baghdad lasted four hours. All traffic was banned in Diyala from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. for three days starting Friday.

The Baghdad ban fell during the times that most Iraqis go to mosques for Friday prayers. Bombers have been known to target Shiite mosques during the weekly religious services with suicide attackers and mortars hidden in vehicles.

Iraqi authorities imposed the vehicle ban as a security measure ``to protect mosques and prayers from any possible terrorist attacks, especially car bombs, in the wake off yesterday's event,'' an official from the prime minister's office said, referring to al-Zarqawi's death. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.

Al-Zarqawi, who had a $25 million bounty on his head, was killed at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday after an intense two-week hunt that U.S. officials said first led to the terror leader's spiritual adviser and then to him.

The U.S. military earlier had displayed images of the battered face of al-Zarqawi and reported that he had been identified by fingerprints, tattoos and scars. Biological samples from his body also were delivered to an FBI crime laboratory in Virginia for DNA testing. The results were expected in three days.

Caldwell said Friday that authorities made a visual identification of al-Zarqawi upon arriving at the site of the airstrike.

Muslims demonstrated outside an East London police station today against last week’s anti-terror raid by armed officers.

In a sometimes tense stand-off, about 100 protestors were heavily outnumbered by police as fundamentalists waved placards and called for the implementation of Sharia Law in Britain.

Abdul Kahar Kalam, 23, was shot in the shoulder as he and his brother Abul Koyair Kalam, 20, were arrested in a dawn raid eight days ago in Forest Gate.

"Consequently, this will allow the police to inflict the same trauma that we have been through on another family. More brothers and sisters as a result, could be arrested, this will have an adverse affect in proving both of my brothers’ innocence."

Many of those who attended wore long thobs - traditional wear in the Gulf - and masked their faces, as did a handful of women protestors wearing burqas.

Anjem Choudary, former UK head of the Islamic group al-Muhajiroun, and right-hand man to Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the so-called Cleric of Hate, told demonstrators: "We have a right to defend ourselves. We will defend ourselves as a community, our lives, our honour. Cowardice and Islam cannot be in the heart of a Muslim at the same time."

He added: "The Muslim community today are treated as second class citizens. There is a shoot and ask questions later policy which has been facilitated by a whole raft of Draconian laws.

"The police at the end of the day are implementing policies introduced by this government."

The noisy demonstration outside Forest Gate police station was contained within a police pen opposite. Protestors waved placards against police tactics and shouted: "Hands off Muslims. Tony Blair is a terrorist and Tony Blair, watch your back."

In a chilling aside, a statement put out by al-Ghurabaa, followers of Alh us-Sunnah Wal Jamaa, said that the killing of Muslims was the price Britons have to pay because of the ‘real terrorists in our midst’.