Hamas leader killed in Israeli bombing
[ TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2002 11:11:07 AM ]

GAZA CITY: The head of the armed wing of the radical Palestinian Hamas movement, Salah Shehade, was among those killed during an Israeli air strike on Gaza City, a Hamas leader said Tuesday.

The attack was aimed at the head of the armed wing of the radical Palestinian Hamas movement, Salah Shehade.

Five or six children died in one of the deadliest Israeli strikes in the nearly 22-month-old conflict, Palestinian hospital sources said. They said 15 of the wounded were in critical condition and more people could be trapped in the rubble.

Hospital sources said a total of 11 people were killed and some 140 wounded in the attack that plunged Israel and the Palestinians into a new round of recriminations after a day of conciliatory gestures that appeared to ease tensions.

Palestinian leaders expressed outrage at what they called a "war crime" and hundreds of angry Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip in protest. At least 10 were wounded in clashes with Israeli forces.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat denounced the raid as a "despicable and cowardly act" just at a time when the two sides were beginning to rekindle a dialogue on humanitarian and security issues.

"We need to break this vicious cycle by giving efforts to put the peace process back on track the chance it deserves," Erakat told.

Gideon Meir, an Israeli spokesman, said the Jewish state was committed to the peace process but defended the operation to kill Shehade. "In order for peace to prevail we must eradicate terrorism," he said.

Palestinian witnesses told that the Israeli F-16 swooped in just before midnight and fired a missile which destroyed or damaged five multi-story buildings that were home to dozens of families, as well as a warehouse.

Rescuers had difficulty getting to the rubble to search for survivors as the neighbourhood was plunged into darkness. Crowds of frantic Palestinians carried bloodied victims away from the rubble and into ambulances.

Israel acknowledged going after Shehade, 50, whom a military source described as a "leading spirit behind the Hamas terrorist organization" responsible for hundreds of attacks on Israelis.

Shehade, founder and head of the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades armed wing of Hamas, is one of Israel's most wanted men. He had been held in an Israeli prison from 1984 to 1998.

"As far as we understand he (Shehade) was targeted and hit, but we cannot know for sure if he was killed," an army spokesman told. Early reports of his death were denied by a Hamas official and hospital sources.

Israel has carried out nearly 100 "targeted killings" of Palestinian militants. On June 30 the army killed Mahannad Taher, leader of Ezzedin al-Qassam for the northern West Bank, in Nablus.

The strategy has come under fire from the international community and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan deplored the latest attack.

"Israel has the legal and moral responsibility to take all measures to avoid the loss of innocent life. It clearly failed to do so in using a missile against an apartment building," his spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said in a statement.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's top adviser, said the authority would appeal to the UN Security Council within 24 hours.

The air strike soured a day that had started out with a series of encouraging moves by both Palestinians and Israelis as a follow up to Saturday's meeting of senior officials that discussed a wide range of humanitarian and security issues.

The Israeli army is still occupying seven major West Bank towns it invaded in mid-June as part of an operation to stamp out suicide bombings.

But both sides made tentative conciliatory gestures Monday to meet Israeli calls for reform of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian demands for an easing of sanctions imposed by the Jewish state.

Palestinian police arrested the head of the PA's customs and tax department on charges of corruption, Palestinian security officials said.

Nasser Tahbub was arrested in the West Bank town of Ramallah as part of the PA's promised crackdown on corruption, urged by the United States and Israel as well as the Palestinian public.

Tahbub was arrested in his finance ministry office under Arafat's orders as Israel mulled releasing part of the 430 million dollars in Palestinian customs duties and taxes it has kept since the start of the conflict.

On another key issue, Palestinian and Israeli officials said the two sides were discussing a new Palestinian security initiative that could lead to a staged Israeli withdrawal from re-occupied zones.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres later said Israel was ready to withdraw its forces from relatively quiet areas of the West Bank such as Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho, the Israeli news agency Itim said. No date was given for a start of the Israeli withdrawal.

Israel also reopened the administrative offices of moderate rector Sari Nusseibeh at Al Quds University in occupied east Jerusalem, reversing a July 9 closedown order that had triggered international criticism.

Israeli officials said police unlocked the offices after Nusseibeh gave a written undertaking to have no contact with the Palestinian Authority, and in particular not to receive any money from it.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice held talks with two envoys from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, US officials said.

They said Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, and the prime minister's former aide de camp, Moshe Kaplinsky, discussed a US proposal to overhaul the Palestinian security apparatus and also went over humanitarian issues.