Wanker parents breeding rocker kids

Mama Was a Riot Grrrl? Then Pick Up a Guitar and Play

Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times

Lucio Westmoreland and Care Bears on Fire performing this month at the CMJ Music Marathon in a showcase for bands of 10- to 17-year-olds.

By JESSICA PRESSLER

Published: November 19, 2006

THE children whispering and fidgeting in front of the stage at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, looked like any kids awaiting, say, a storyteller. Then Zora Sicher and Hugo Orozco, the two 11-year-olds who make up the band Magnolia, climbed onstage and broke into a hard-driving original song called “Volume.” It was clear this was not quiet time.

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Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times

Left to right, Josh Barocas, Charlie Klarsfeld and Oliver Ignatius of Hysterics.

“Wooooo!” a dreadlocked woman shouted from the back of the room, where a crowd of adults, many in vintage concert T-shirts and cardigans, looking like kids themselves, cheered and sipped bloody marys.

A clump of teenagers looked on appreciatively during the set, part of a showcase of all-kid bands on a Saturday afternoon this month at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York. When the Magnolia duo paused to adjust their instruments — Zora on guitar, Hugo on drums — a babe in arms wailed. “Are you crying because they stopped, honey?” Mom cooed.

For this set of performers and audience members, indie rock is as familiar as a lullaby. “We like punk, classic rock, metal, riot grrrl,” said Hugo, an elfin-face sixth grader from Brooklyn, who was given her first drum set at 7.

Magnolia, like other bands on the Union Hall bill — Care Bears on Fire, Tiny Masters of Today, Fiasco, Hysterics — is more than a novelty act. It is developing a following on New York’s burgeoning under-age music circuit, where bands too young for driving licenses have CDs, Web sites and managers.

“Oh my god, there’s like a huge, huge kid-rock scene here,” said Jack McFadden, known as Skippy, who booked the show at Union Hall. “It’s really very indicative of Park Slope, since so many of the parents who live around here are hip and have these hip little kids that they dress in, like, CBGBs T-shirts.”

It makes sense: in this family-friendly part of Brooklyn every other brownstone seems to house creative professionals who urge their children to march to — or become — a different drummer.

Nearly every weekend 10- to 17-year-olds play shows in the afternoon at bars like Union Hall, the Liberty Heights Tap Room in Red Hook and Southpaw in Park Slope, which has begun a teenage rock series, the Young and the Restless. In Manhattan there are all-ages shows at the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa, Arlene’s Grocery and afternoon Death Disco parties at Cake Shop on the Lower East Side.

“They could call it kid-core,” said Rich Egan, the owner of Vagrant records in Los Angeles, who signed the New Jersey-based band Senses Fail as teenagers and is wooing a younger band he first heard on MySpace.

Preteens and teenagers have found success in bands almost since the birth of rock. The Jackson 5, Hanson and New Kids on the Block were all big-selling acts, formed by parents or impresarios. But those acts recorded mainstream pop. The latest kid bands are emerging in the traditions of garage, hardcore and indie rock, a reflection of their hipster parents’ tastes and their 1980s and ’90s CD collections.

Hugo’s mother, Molly Gove, who said she was in a few riot grrrl bands herself in the ’90s, enrolled her daughter in the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York, where children 8 to 18 learn the playlist of bands like Bikini Kill and the Pixies.

Across the country kid-core acts have emerged, including a pair of brothers 8 and 11 in Detroit, who play with their father in the Jack White-produced band the Muldoons; sisters 12 and 14 who make up the Seattle-based duo Smoosh; and the Nashville-based band Be Your Own Pet, which toured with Sonic Youth in the summer.

Many teenage rockers connect through MySpace, where they post sample tracks, videos and announcements of gigs, as well as leave one another messages of support. In a message to Magnolia, Forrest Fire Gray, 14, whose father was the monologuist Spalding Gray and who is the frontman of Too Busy Being Bored, wrote, “Can’t wait to play with u guys.”

More than a few of New York’s baby-face rockers have famous parents in the entertainment business, who have encouraged their children’s artistic streaks and served as role models for professional success. Lucian Buscemi, 16, the son of the actor Steve Buscemi, along with Julian Bennett-Holmes and Jonathan Shea, both also 16, have become something like the kingpins of the Park Slope kid-rock scene, ever since their band, Fiasco — previously known as StunGun — became the first youth band to play the Liberty Heights Tap Room.

Pale and thin, with fluffy manes of rocker hair, Lucian and Julian are also partners in a record label, Beautiful Records, which has recorded Care Bears on Fire and Magnolia, using equipment that Lucian was given for his eighth-grade graduation, soon after a baby sitter introduced the two boys to ’80s punk.

“We were into, like, Rancid and Blink 182 at the time,” said Julian, cringing at his junior-high lack of cool. “That ended when we heard Minor Threat.”

Many kid-core bands cite that hardcore act from the ’80s as a big influence. The adults who attend kid-rock shows couldn’t be happier. This is the music they loved as teenagers. “This is the first generation of parents who have grown up listening to rock ’n’ roll, so they’re thrilled about it,” said Stephen Depulla, the owner of Liberty Heights Tap Room. Not least because it provides an opportunity for bonding.

Kathie Russo, Forrest Fire Gray’s mother, said she and her son swap music like friends. “I suggested he cover ‘Angie’ by the Rolling Stones, and he introduced me to Modest Mouse and the Vines,” she said. “Last night we were in the car singing along to Audioslave. I can’t imagine that with my parents.”

She also probably can’t imagine her parents acting as roadies, which many of the young rockers’ moms and dads do.

The most prominent band on New York’s junior-varsity rock scene is Hysterics, a “psychedelic” quartet founded at the artsy St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn. The week after performing at Union Hall at the CMJ Marathon, the band members gathered at the studio of Jeff Peretz, their manager. Mr. Peretz also guides the Tangents, whose bass guitarist, Miles Robbins, 12, is the son of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.

Members of Hysterics discussed their coming gig, a party for a new Valentino perfume, which was organized through a friend of the fashion photographer Pamela Hanson, whose son, Charlie Klarsfeld, 17, is the group’s guitarist. The evening, at 7 World Trade Center last Thursday, turned out to be a pileup of celebrity children with music careers, including the DJs Lola Schnabel and Mark Ronson.

“Are we going to get swag?” asked Josh Barocas, 17, the quiet bassist, whose enormous Afro speaks of a somewhat louder interior personality.

“What’s swag?” Charlie asked.

“It’s free stuff they give to famous people,” Mr. Peretz said.

“Every teen band in New York wants to be Hysterics,” he added. The group was discovered two years ago, when a science teacher at St. Ann’s posted one of its songs on his blog, and its cool factor rocketed after signing a record deal with independent v2. The company took the musicians for cookies and milk at the City Bakery. As high school juniors and seniors, they are old enough for the gesture to be ironic.

NOT so the Tiny Masters of Today. On a Friday evening in November, Ada, the bassist, 10, a slight girl with a heart-shape face, was reading “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” at Piano’s, a Lower East Side bar, while waiting to go on with her brother, Ivan, 12, the lead guitarist. (Their father requested that the family name not appear in print to protect the children’s privacy.)

After the set, during which they performed, among other songs, Ada’s mournful “Pictures” — “It’s about my friends in second grade and how awful they were to me,” she said — an adult in the audience called the band “the new Raincoats,” a reference to an experimental British act of the late ’70s.

Ivan is familiar with their music, although he said he prefers louder stuff like the Stooges. “And I’m really into Apollo Sunshine right now,” he said, perched on a bar stool and chewing thoughtfully on a cocktail straw. “I go through phases.”

Their father has worked for the indie label Caroline and once pulled the kids out of school early to see the White Stripes. His children’s affection for indie rock, he said, is a reaction to mainstream tastes. “They’re rebelling against, like, Walt Disney.”

Or maybe Britney Spears. “Our parents had the Clash, the Who, Bowie,” said Alana Higgins, 17, the bassist for the band Modrocket. She was at a Dunkin’ Donuts in the East Village near the space where her band rehearses.

“The scenes back then were so much better. Rock music now — it’s upsetting. Our kids are going to look back at our music and it’s going to be like —— ”

“Kelly Clarkson,” interjected Alice Blythe, 17, Modrocket’s singer.

The kid-core sound is far less slick than the pop and R & B that animates “American Idol,” either because the musicians are just learning to play or because their musical influences trace to the DIY roots of garage rock.

Tiny Masters of Today was on the Oct. 11 cover of the British magazine Artrocker. “They’re making this kind of primitive, unprocessed, unfiltered music,” their father said.

It was that sound that attracted Russell Simins, the grown-up drummer in Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, who found the Tiny Masters on MySpace last year. He now accompanies them on drums during live sets.

“They have this unadulterated way of saying things, ” Mr. Simins said, sipping a beer at Piano’s. “It’s perfectly not thought out. They don’t have angst. Or their angst is simpler: it’s about being precocious and being kids who want to have fun and eat ice cream or about being bored. They’re not asking why they’re bored,” he said with a laugh. “They don’t have, like, existential malaise.” When Mr. Simins plays with the group, his hulking 36-year-old frame is a perfect foil to the children’s Lemony Snicket-character bodies.

He insists that he is not actually in the band, even though he’ll be on their coming album, which will also feature guest appearances by Fred Schneider of the B-52s and the singer and songwriter Kimya Dawson.

And Mr. Simins occasionally practices with them at home in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. “Sometimes I’ll stay over for dinner — you know, pizza or spaghetti or quesadillas or whatever,” he said. “Like I’m a kid.”

The joys of private health 'care' in the US II

Insurer Sued for Refusing to Pay Costs of Anorexia

By TINA KELLEY

Published: November 9, 2006

NEWARK, Nov. 8 — A New Jersey couple filed suit against Aetna Inc., the Hartford-based insurance company, on Wednesday, claiming that it refused to fully cover their daughter’s treatment for anorexia.

The suit was filed in United States District Court here. The couple, Cliff and Maria DeAnna of Mountainside, N.J., said Aetna refused to pay for nearly 10 weeks of their daughter’s inpatient treatment, saying her eating disorder was not “biologically based.” Insurers have balked at covering mental illnesses that they say do not have a proven physiological basis.

Ms. DeAnna, who declined to provide her daughter’s given name for privacy reasons, said by phone that she had been hospitalized for 101 days so far this year but that Aetna U.S. Healthcare H.M.O. would pay for only 35 inpatient days. Symptoms of anorexia include excessive dieting and exercise and a distorted belief that one is overweight.

The case is an example of what advocates for the mentally ill call longstanding inequities in insurance coverage for psychological ailments. The family’s lawyer, Bruce Nagel, said state law required insurers to provide the same coverage for mental and nervous conditions as for physiological diseases, like heart ailments or emphysema. The suit estimates that hundreds of people in New Jersey have had similar difficulties receiving coverage, and it seeks certification as a class action. Ms. DeAnna estimates that her family has paid almost $100,000 in medical bills this year alone, with the help of a home equity loan. Her daughter, who is 20 and stands 5-foot-6, weighed 102 pounds when she last went into the hospital.

A spokeswoman for Aetna, Cynthia B. Michener, said the company had not yet been served with the suit and could not discuss a particular case without written authorization from the family involved.

Anorexia has a high mortality rate, said Lynn Grefe, the chief executive of the National Eating Disorders Association, a nonprofit group based in Seattle.

While many lawmakers and insurance companies have struggled to define anorexia, some medical experts question the usefulness of the term “biologically based” to describe a disease. Ms. Grefe said that Thomas R. Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, has said research has established that the disease is a brain disorder.

“While the symptoms are behavioral, this illness has a biological core, with genetic components, changes in brain activity and neural pathways currently under study,” he wrote in an Oct. 5 letter to her.

Ms. Grefe said she was not aware of any other class-action suits seeking insurance coverage for anorexia, “but it’s about time.”

According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, a nonprofit organization based in Highland Park, Ill., a judge in a 1989 case against Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Greater New York ruled that starvation resulting from anorexia is a physical state that should be covered by medical benefits.

In 2001, Blue Cross and Blue Shield agreed to pay $8.2 million to the state of Minnesota to settle a suit filed by the state involving treatment denied to a 21-year-old anorexic woman who committed suicide. Her family paid for her treatment but sued Blue Cross for refusing to pay for it. The insurer also settled with the family for $1 million.

From the New York Times

The joys of private health 'care' in the US

When Choice of a Doctor Drives Up Other Bills

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Published: September 11, 2006

Irene Greco knew she would have to pay from her own pocket to use the surgeon she wanted, rather than one in her insurer’s network, but she thought she knew how much the additional cost would be. She was wrong — by almost $5,000.

She had her operation at a hospital that was in Oxford Health Plans’ network. But Oxford, her insurer, says that because the surgeon was outside its network of doctors, the hospital bill as a whole would also be considered out of network, and therefore subject to less coverage.

Oxford says its coverage policy is straightforward and properly communicated to its customers. But some health care experts say this policy is so unusual that they have never seen it before, and the hospital industry calls it the latest in a string of unfair practices by Oxford and its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, that are designed to avoid paying what is owed.

The Healthcare Association of New York State, the main lobbying group for the state’s hospitals, has filed a complaint over Ms. Greco’s case with Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office, which is looking into the matter. The group’s leaders say they cannot recall ever making such a complaint against an insurer.

Oxford, one of the largest insurers in the metropolitan area, insists that everyone involved should have understood in advance how it would handle Ms. Greco’s bills. It was spelled out “in the certificate of coverage the member receives when they sign up for the plan,” said Maria Gordon-Shydlo, a spokeswoman for Oxford.

Ms. Greco, 45, had surgery at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre, N.Y., a hospital in Oxford’s network, so she expected everything except the surgeon’s fee to be completely covered. Instead, she learned months later that she was being charged a $1,000 deductible and 30 percent of all remaining costs, more than $4,700 in all.

When she received the bill, she and her husband were both recovering from major medical treatment, they were out of work, they expected to lose their health insurance within months and they were trying to sell their home.

“We had no idea how we were going to pay it,” she said. “I just sat at the kitchen table and cried.”

Ms. Greco said, “It’s an unreasonable policy that an in-network hospital suddenly becomes an out-of-network hospital just because you use a different doctor.”

Officials at the hospital and the Healthcare Association said they had never heard of such a practice until she complained to them. They say they have since learned of a few insurance policies with similar provisions, but that in those cases, the rules are more clearly stated.

Ms. Greco’s troubles began more than two years ago, when she and her husband, Richard, were living in Smithtown, N.Y. Mr. Greco, an accountant and business consultant, had lymphoma and was forced to stop working. He had endured chemotherapy and was awaiting a bone marrow transplant.

Expecting their insurance policy to run out in a few months, Ms. Greco had gastric bypass surgery in June 2004 at Mercy, using a surgeon she had met. “My biggest concern was, because I was very overweight and he had a catastrophic illness, we weren’t going to be able to get insurance again,” she said.

She knew she had to pay 30 percent of the surgeon’s fee because he was not in Oxford’s network, but she thought that everything else would be covered completely. She learned otherwise in the bill from Mercy.

Mercy also stood to lose because of Oxford’s position. Hospitals generally charge insurers higher prices for out-of-network patients than for others. When a hospital joins an insurer’s network, they negotiate a contract that includes much lower charges, and Mercy had such a contract with Oxford.

Oxford paid the hospital based on the lower, in-network rates, even though the insurer told Ms. Greco that the service was out of network. And even at those lower rates, Oxford declined to pay the full amount, saying that Ms. Greco was responsible for the deductible, plus 30 percent of the remainder.

Ms. Greco and the hospital say the only information Oxford gave them in advance about her operation was in written notices authorizing the surgery, which said nothing about her treatment being out of network. Oxford does not dispute that.

Ms. Gordon-Shydlo said that when the surgeon’s office called Oxford to authorize the surgery, the insurer explained that hospital services would be considered out of network. But the surgeon had little reason to focus on coverage for the hospital bill.

Chris Hendriks, spokeswoman for Catholic Health Services of Long Island, Mercy’s parent company, said the hospital went through the usual steps to verify the service would be covered, and got no hint that Oxford would pay anything less than the full bill. “Our finance people say they have never encountered this before,” she said.

Ms. Greco appealed her bill to an Oxford review board and lost. She said when she asked Oxford for an explanation, it cited a single passage in her handbook dealing with out-of-network coverage: “When you receive covered services from network providers but not in accordance with the H.M.O.’s guidelines, those covered services will be covered under this certificate in accordance with its terms and provisions.”

Ms. Gordon-Shydlo pointed to that line and two others. One says that if a patient is treated by an in-network provider, but in a way that does not follow Oxford’s rules, “the covered services will be treated as if they were delivered by a nonnetwork provider.” Another line says Oxford pays on an out-of-network basis for seeing doctors without its approval, but it does not mention services like hospital stays.

Ms. Gordon-Shydlo said the combination of the three passages, separated by several pages, makes it clear that using a nonnetwork doctor makes the entire treatment out of network.

Daniel Sisto, president of the Healthcare Association, said, “Nobody would understand what it’s supposed to mean.”

Many hospitals and doctors in the region say that while they clash constantly with insurers, Oxford is more severe than its competitors, particularly since UnitedHealth took it over in 2004. Jamaica Hospital in Queens has accused Oxford of refusing to pay promised rates and threatening to exclude the hospital from its network, and the hospital has asked law enforcement agencies to investigate.

The state Department of Health has charged that United frequently violates state rules, often by denying payment to doctors. And doctors complain that Oxford, much more than other insurers, accuses them of years of overbilling, based on minimal evidence, and demands large repayments.

Officials at United and Oxford say such complaints come from providers who have benefited from sloppy practices. They say that in making sure rules are followed, they are helping consumers by limiting health care costs.

From the New York Times

Israel Kills 2 Women During Mosque Siege

Suhaib Salem/Reuters

Israeli forces opened fire on a group of women who streamed to a Gaza mosque to serve as human shields for gunmen holed up there. Two women were killed and about 10 injured, hospitals said.

By GREG MYRE

Published: November 3, 2006

JERUSALEM, Nov. 3 — Israeli troops fired at a large crowd of unarmed Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip today as the women approached a mosque to help Palestinian militants holed up inside. Two women were killed and about 10 were injured, according to hospital workers.

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Suhaib Salem/Reuters

One of the Palestinian woman who ringed a mosque in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun fell to the ground after being wounded.

The shooting provoked widespread outrage among Palestinians.

The Israeli military said its fire was directed at Palestinian gunmen who were hiding among the women as they marched toward the Um al-Nasir mosque in Beit Hanun, the town in the northeastern Gaza Strip where Israeli troops and militants have been battling for the past three days. The Israelis said eight militants were shot, and that they were not aware that women were hit, but were investigating.

Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, angrily called on the international community to “come here and witness the daily massacres that are being carried out against the Palestinian nation.”

Mr. Haniya also praised the women “who led the protest to break the siege of Beit Hanun.”

The shooting, which was captured by television cameras, was the most dramatic episode so far in the fighting in Beit Hanun. Israeli forces entered the town early on Wednesday in an attempt to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets from the area into Israel.

As Israeli forces pursued the militants in the town on Thursday, an estimated 60 gunmen dashed inside the Um al-Nasir mosque, initiating a standoff that lasted through the night.

Israeli troops in armored vehicles surrounded the mosque. For several hours, soldiers used loudspeakers to call on the militants to surrender, and several did, according to the military. The Israelis also fired tear gas and stun grenades into the mosque in an attempt to force the gunmen out.

Around 3 a.m. today, the gunmen in the mosque began firing on the Israeli soldiers, who shot back, and heavy exchanges ensued, the military said.

The Israeli army called in an armored bulldozer and used it to knock down one wall of the mosque compound, the military and Palestinian witnesses said.

Early this morning, a Palestinian radio station called on women in the town to march to the mosque and support the gunmen inside. A short time later, hundreds of women, dressed in flowing black abayas and wearing head scarves, headed to the the scene.

As they approached the mosque, shots rang out, but the women continued marching. A moment later, a number of women were hit, and the crowd scattered. Some of the wailing women turning back, while others kept advancing toward the mosque, climbing over improvised dirt barriers set up by the Israeli forces.

“We heard the call for women to help the fighters, and we decided to go,” said Mona Abu Jasir, 37, who was hit by a bullet in the right leg. “We had no weapons, and we were walking toward the mosque when I was shot.”

Television footage showed at least one man in the crowd, though there was no indication that he had a weapon. The man was shot and fell to the ground, and was surrounded by women until rescue workers arrived.

One marcher, Suhad el-Masri, 28, said she and several of her relatives were carrying abayas — long flowing gowns — and scarves to give to the men.

“We took them so they could disguise themselves as women and escape,” said Ms. Masri. Her sister, Hiba Rajab, 20, sustained serious injuries when she was shot in both legs and her left arm.

In the ensuing chaos, some women reached the mosque, and the gunmen managed to slip away, the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses said. It was not clear whether the gunmen dressed as women to facilitate their escape. Shortly after the standoff ended, the roof of the mosque collapsed, apparently from the cumulative damage sustained in the fighting.

Palestinian hospitals identified the two women who were killed as Amna Abu Oudah, 42, and Intissar Ali, 40.

Later in the day, about 1,000 women marched outside Egypt’s diplomatic mission in Gaza City, denouncing the Israeli actions and calling on Egypt to intervene.

Also in Beit Hanun, two young Palestinian males, ages 15 and 18, were killed by Israeli fire, Palestinian medical workers said. Over the past three days, more than 20 Palestinians have been killed, including militants and civilians, as well as one Israeli soldier.

So far, the Israeli incursion has not reduced the Palestinian rocket fire, which has continued for the past three days. Militants fired several more rockets from northern Gaza into southern Israel today, but there was no damage or injuries, the Israeli military said. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers arrested the Palestinian minister for housing and public works, Abdel Rahman Zaidan, who belongs to Hamas, the radical Islamic group that leads the Palestinian Authority. Israel has arrested more than two dozen Palestinian legislators and cabinet ministers from Hamas in the West Bank over the past four months.

The crackdown began after Palestinian militants, including those from Hamas, staged a cross-border raid and captured an Israeli soldier, and then took him into Gaza. That event also prompted the Israeli military to return to Gaza, which the army had left in September 2005.

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza.

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Women left dead as gunmen escape

Panic … Palestinian women run for cover after Israeli troops opened fire.
Photo: Reuters/Suhaib Salem

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Shams Odeh in Beit Hanoun, Gaza
November 4, 2006

SLOWLY at first, then with growing confidence, the crowd of veiled Palestinian women approached the outer wall of the Gaza mosque.

Inside, 60 Palestinian gunmen were hiding out, pinned down by Israeli tanks and troops positioned just a few hundred metres away, on the other side of an earth barricade.

The women, about four dozen of them, some elderly and some teenagers, were hoping to help the gunmen flee, or at least act as "human shields" and press for their release unharmed.

Two of the women were to die - and all of the gunmen to escape.

As the women walked down a deserted road towards the mosque yesterday, pressing themselves up against a high sandstone wall on their right, with Israeli troops off to their left, gunfire rang out from the Israeli positions.

The women pushed on, walking faster and pressing closer together, encouraging one another as they went.

More shots cracked overhead as the Israeli troops tried to force the women to turn back. Some did turn around, but most pushed on.

Then, up ahead, towards the front of the procession, several gunshots rang out from Israeli troops, and one woman, dressed in a traditional tan-brown hijab, fell to the ground. Another, critically wounded, fell nearby.

The Israeli Army said later it had fired at armed Palestinians but was investigating whether it had also shot the women.

Screaming and panicked, several of the women's colleagues rushed to help. As one of the women lay motionless on the pavement, her cream veil fell away. A trickle and then a steady stream of blood emerged from under her body and ran into the drain at the side of the road.

"Bring an ambulance! Bring an ambulance!" screamed the women, throwing their arms up in the air and wailing.

Others grabbed one another and began to flee, then turned back and pushed on.

Within seconds two ambulances were on the scene, and the woman, her limbs hanging lifelessly, was bundled onto a stretcher. The critically wounded woman nearby was also picked up, and later died in hospital. Six more were wounded.

"World, where are you?" screamed a woman towards a television camera. "People are being killed. There are martyrs."

Moments later several women ran back down the road from the direction of the mosque, struggling to carry among them another of the wounded, a young woman in a black hijab, the bottom of her jeans showing.

On the street, another woman held a patterned black headdress coated in blood.

"Look! The brains of a woman of the resistance, splattered on her scarf. Look at it," she said, staring into a camera.

At a nearby hospital, men waited to find out what had happened to their wives.

"I urged my wife to join the other brave women who went to help end the siege of the hero fighters," said Khaled Faleh, a 34-year-old husband. He did not know if she was still alive.

The dramatic events came on the third day of an Israeli assault on the town of Beit Hanoun, the largest operation it has conducted in the Gaza Strip in months, designed to put a stop to militants firing homemade rockets into Israel. The gunmen had holed up in the al-Nasir mosque on Thursday evening.

In the melee, the gunmen fled the mosque, and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that heads the Palestinian Government, said they had also managed to escape from Beit Hanoun, which is almost entirely surrounded by Israeli troops. The Israeli Army confirmed the gunmen had escaped.

Reuters