US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to express 'deep sorrow' over the deaths of 18 Palestinians in Israeli shelling of a Gaza town on Wednesday, his spokesman told AFP.
"Dr Rice called president Mahmud Abbas to express deep sorrow about the civilians killed in Beit Hanun," Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
"The president asked her to move to stop Israeli aggression in the Palestinian territories," he said.
Rice's phone call followed world-wide condemnation of the Beit Hanun shelling, in which 13 of the victims were women and children.
In Washington, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: "It's a terrible tragedy that we deeply regret ... Our condolences go out to the families of the victims."
But he called on the Palestinians to refrain from seeking revenge, after calls by both the ruling Hamas movement Hamas and the Fatah party of the moderate president Mahmud Abbas to resume suicide attacks inside Israel.
"The response to the loss of innocent lives is not go out and take revenge ... on other innocents," McCormack said.
"We call on all parties to show restraint so as to avoid any harm to innocent civilians," added National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
The Beit Hanun deaths came just five days before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to meet US President George W. Bush at the White House for talks on reviving the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The deaths prompted moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to accuse Israel of destroying all hope for peace.
Washington has angered Palestinians by last week describing that Israel's operations in Gaza, which have killed more than 80 people, around 30 of them militants, during the past week, as an issue of "self-defence."
"We fully condemn the international silence and those who justify acts committed by Israel," Abbas said earlier on Wednesday.
"I call on the entire world, including those who justify Israeli actions by pretending that they are self-defence acts, to come to see what it happening," he said.