By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Israeli newspapers were filled with a mixture of remorse and recrimination on Thursday, a day after the army shelled a town in the Gaza Strip, killing 18 civilians, including women and children.

While some commentators said the attack, which Palestinians have termed a massacre, called for national soul-searching, others said it was just the "price tag" Palestinians should pay for having launched attacks on Israel.

"Anyone who couldn't sleep yesterday because they were worried about the damage to the state of Israel's good reputation can stop worrying," wrote Alex Fishman in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's most widely read newspaper.

"It has been a long time since we had such a reputation. Israel is viewed by the world as having a light trigger finger when it comes to civilians. Whether this is true or not, this is a fact. That is our image."

Israeli leaders have expressed regret for the killings, which military officers said were probably the result of artillery rounds accidentally overshooting their target.

Another commentator in Yedioth, Sima Kadmon, said that if the shells did indeed overshoot, it wasn't just a problem of calibration in the military, but in Israeli society itself.

"This was not a mistake. This was a disaster. It's a regrettable mistake when you step on someone's toe, not when you kill 11 members of one family."

"WIPE IT OUT"

"No excuses can justify this atrocity," Ha'aretz newspaper said. "None of Israel's responses to this catastrophe ... can paper over its sole responsibility for this fearsome and senseless killing."

But elsewhere in the Israeli press there was little regret, with diplomats, politicians and commentators quick to say that Israel had little to feel bad about.

The deputy defence minister, Ephraim Sneh, told the Jerusalem Post the "moral responsibility" for the deaths rested with Palestinian militants who were "cynically using their civilian population as a human shield for terrorist activity".

The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, said the attack hardly represented a "watershed moment", saying: "War is a dirty business and during war ugly things happen."

In the mass-circulation Ma'ariv newspaper, commentator Ben Caspit said the fact Palestinian militants had fired hundreds of homemade rockets into Israel meant a response was due.

"Such behaviour carries a price tag," he wrote.

"...Every other method has been tried, and failed. With scoundrels you behave like a scoundrel, and with murderous, bloodthirsty terrorism that wants to wipe you off the map, you have to respond accordingly: wipe it out."

Around 350 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its Gaza offensive in June, doctors say. Palestinian rocket fire into Israel has caused panic and injuries but killed no one.

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