Car bomb kills Palestinian guerrilla chief's son

9.15am

BEIRUT - A car bomb killed the son of Palestinian guerrilla leader Ahmed Jibril in Beirut on Monday in an attack which their organisation blamed on Israel.

Israel, rocked by two suicide bombings in less than 24 hours, denied it was behind the killing of Mohammed Jihad Ahmed Jibril, a member of the military leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).

Israeli media reports said Jihad Jibril was involved in the smuggling of arms and explosives from Lebanon to Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The explosion in the Lebanese capital's Mar Elias district scattered body parts around the car and left it twisted and doused with blood, witnesses said.

Speaking to reporters, Ahmed Jibril blamed Israel's Mossad intelligence agency for the death of his son. "The Israeli enemy knows he was a serious field commander," he told reporters.

An aide to Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer denied his country was involved. "Israel had no connection to it," Yarden Vatikay said. "As usual, they blame Israel."

In northern Israel, police said a tall man in jeans and sports shoes who tried to board a factory bus detonated his explosives when two patrolmen demanded his identity papers.

One policeman was hurt in the blast, which occurred about 15km from Jenin, scene of the heaviest fighting in the six-week West Bank offensive that Israel launched on March 29 after suicide attacks killed dozens of Israelis.

Police said the man might have been heading for the Israeli town of Afula, targeted several times during an almost 20-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed himself and three people in a market in the seaside Israeli city of Netanya. The attack shattered a growing sense of security among Israelis following the end of the West Bank operation.

In a raid on Monday into Palestinian-ruled Tulkarm, a city in the West Bank near Netanya, Israeli forces detained a Palestinian woman who planned to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel, an army spokeswoman said.

Palestinian officials said three Palestinian men, including a member of the Palestinian intelligence service, were also detained in the assault on a house.

President Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority issued its toughest statement yet after what it called the "terrorist operation" in Netanya. "These attacks against Israeli civilians contradict the decision of the Palestinian leadership," it said.

And in a shift of emphasis, senior US officials acknowledged that Arafat, held directly responsible by Israel, could not prevent all suicide bombings.

At least 1359 Palestinians and 476 Israelis have died in almost 20 months of violence, in which the PFLP-GC -- once famed for its guerrilla exploits -- has taken little part.

But it claimed responsibility for an arms shipment Israel seized en route to the West Bank a year ago.

Jibril's Damascus-based group is a part of an alliance of radical Palestinian factions opposed to peace negotiations with Israel that Arafat began with the 1993 Oslo accords.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) -- from which Jibril's group split years ago -- claimed the Netanya attack.

Its leader, Ahmed Saadat, ended up in a Palestinian jail supervised by US and British wardens this month under a deal to end Israel's month-long siege of Arafat's headquarters.

Britain said on Monday Israel had expressed concern that Saadat had approved the Netanya bombing while incarcerated in the West Bank town of Jericho.

"We have asked the Israeli government to substantiate this allegation (which) is also a pressing matter for the detaining body, the Palestinian Authority, and we will raise it with them," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

A senior Israeli security source said Saadat had ordered the Netanya bombing and had been involved in coordinating the attack.

The source said Israel had complained to Britain and the United States on Saturday that Saadat had free access to mobile and regular phones and had spoken to Palestinian activists.

Since Israel's complaint, US and British wardens at the jail had stopped Saadat from freely using telephones, the source said, adding that the move came too late to prevent him from ordering the Netanya attack.

In Cyprus, a government spokesman said final destinations had been settled for 12 of 13 Palestinian militants sent to the island at the end of a five-week Israeli siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where they had been holed up.

Earlier, European Union envoy Miguel Moratinos said in Cyprus a deal on sending the militants to various EU countries was within reach, but final word would come from Brussels on Tuesday.

Israel wants the 13, now held in a Larnaca hotel, to be kept under surveillance and said it may seek their extradition.

- REUTERS

Feature: Middle East

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