Israelis kill long-wanted Hamas leader

Herald news services

JERUSALEM — Firing missiles from helicopters at a van on a West Bank road, Israeli forces on Friday night killed a top leader of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas who had eluded them for years, Hamas officials said.

The man, Muhmoud Abu Hanoud, had been wanted by the Israelis since at least 1995, and his escapes from previous attempts to capture or kill him had gained him a reputation in the West Bank as "the man with seven lives." Hanoud was accused by Israel of planning terrorist operations that included two suicide bombings in Jerusalem in 1997 that killed 21 people.

Prior to Friday’s attack, Israeli security forces went on alert after receiving intelligence that three armed Palestinians were on their way to carry out an attack inside Israel, they said. It was not known if the alert and the attack on the Hamas trio were connected.

Hanoud, who was in his mid-30s, was the senior West Bank military leader of Hamas, which pledged revenge for the killing and called for a general strike throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip today.

Two brothers who were members of Hamas were also killed in the attack, on a day when at least seven Palestinians, combatants and civilians, died violently in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On Thursday, five Palestinian boys died in Gaza in a blast that Palestinian officials attributed to an unexploded Israeli bomb. Israeli officials said on Friday that they would investigate the incident.

The surge in violence precedes the arrival on Monday of U.S. envoys who will spearhead the Bush administration’s first intensive drive for peace in the Middle East.

A Palestinian boy was among those who died Friday when fighting erupted in the Gaza Strip after the funeral of the five boys who were killed in an explosion on Thursday.

Palestinians said Israeli soldiers shot and killed the boy, a 15-year-old, but the Israeli army denied the accusation, saying its soldiers shot only into the air to disperse rioters.

The Israeli defense minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, on Friday promised an investigation into the blast in Gaza on Thursday.

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