Hamas vows to avenge leader's death

GAZA - Tens of thousands of mourners cried out to avenge the assassination of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi by Israel ahead of its planned US-backed pullout from Gaza.

The Hamas military wing pledged "100 retaliations" for Rantissi, a 56-year-old firebrand who was the second Hamas leader Israel killed in Gaza in less than a month. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin died in a missile attack on March 22.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon praised the army for Saturday's helicopter strike on Rantissi, the Palestinian Muslim group's political leader in Gaza, and pledged the Jewish state would continue to "fight terror".

Sharon told his cabinet the assassination was part of a dual strategy to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza - home to 1.3 million Palestinians and occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war - while striking at militants.

Rantissi's body was carried aloft on a stretcher draped in a green Hamas flag, his face left uncovered to reveal the red lacerations of shrapnel. Weeping mourners reached out their hands to try to touch his body.

"The blood of Yassin and Rantissi will not be wasted. Their blood will force the eruption of new volcanoes," rose the call of one militant. Thousands took up the refrain of revenge.

Hamas has so far failed to carry out the kind of massive attack it had promised to avenge Yassin's death.

Rantissi, an Egyptian-trained paediatrician, was outspoken in his support of violence. Israel branded him "a mastermind of terrorism". He died when two missiles slammed into his car hours after a suicide bomber killed an Israeli soldier at northern Gaza's Erez crossing.

Hamas's armed wing vowed "100 retaliations" that will shake "the criminal entity".

Faced with an Israeli threat to wipe out all Hamas leaders, the movement said it had named Rantissi's successor but would keep his identity secret. Palestinian sources speculated the new leader was either Mahmoud al-Zahar or Ismail Haniyah.

Rantissi's assassination stoked Palestinian anger already high over US President George W. Bush's statement this week that Israel could retain land Palestinians want for a state in any peace deal.

"A CRIME"

"It is no doubt a crime," Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie told reporters. "Unfortunately the Israelis feel they are supported by the United States administration."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticised Rantissi's killing, saying it could lead to more violence in the Middle East. The European Union and Britain also condemned it.

The United States denied giving Israel the green light to go after Rantissi but refrained from condemning the assassination.

In his first public comments on the killing, Sharon said: "The policy is an effort on the one hand to progress on the diplomatic process and on the other to harm the terror organisations and those who lead them."

Rantissi was viewed as particularly hardline in a militant Islamic group that has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and is sworn to Israel's destruction.

In Gaza, troops killed a Palestinian gunman near a Jewish settlement, thwarting an attempted attack, the army said.

The Al-Aqsa Brigades, part of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, said it had sent the dead militant as a first response to Rantissi's assassination.

"We promise to God that we will continue fighting until the occupation leaves our land," the group said in a statement.

Israel killed Rantissi three days after Sharon won Bush's backing at the White House for his plan to withdraw from Gaza and four Jewish settlements in the West Bank by the end of 2005.

Bush coupled the endorsement with a sharp departure from US policy. He said Israel could not be expected to give up all land captured in the 1967 Middle East war and rejected any right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.

Sharon presented his "disengagement plan" to his cabinet on Sunday. But a vote will be delayed until after a referendum on the pullout is held on May 2 among the 200,000 members of the prime minister's right-wing Likud party.

Palestinian leaders say the go-it-alone Israeli steps mask an intention to annex major Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Some 7,500 settlers live in the Gaza Strip. About 200,000 settlers and two million Palestinians reside in the West Bank.

- REUTERS