Israeli Army targets Hamas

By JUSTINE HUGGLER

Israeli soldiers ambushed and killed a senior Hamas militant in the Gaza Strip yesterday, as it emerged that six Hamas members killed over the weekend were trying to adapt a model aircraft to carry explosives for use in attacks on Israelis.

Riyad abu Zeid was shot by undercover Israeli soldiers while driving on the Gaza coast road yesterday morning. He died of his injuries after being taken to an Israeli hospital in an Army helicopter.

Palestinian witnesses described Israeli soldiers running between the cars on the busy coast road, the only route between Gaza City and the southern Gaza Strip open to Palestinians. When they came level with the black Honda in which abu Zeid was travelling, they opened fire, the witnesses said.

Another witness described seeing shots fired at the black Honda from a blue van full of vegetables parked at the side of the road.

The Israeli Army said it had not intended to assassinate abu Zeid, but to capture him, and that its soldiers shot at him only after he opened fire. The Israeli Army has an openly stated policy of assassinating Palestinian militants.

In a statement, the Army said that abu Zeid was a close associate of Salah Shehadeh, a Hamas leader who was assassinated last July in an Israeli airstrike which also killed nine Palestinian children, and that he had taken over Shehadeh's role in the group. Shehadeh was one of the most senior links between Hamas' political and armed wings.

The killing came amid reports that the Israeli Army is preparing for an offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas militants set fire to an Israeli tank and killed four soldiers inside it using a roadside bomb on Saturday.

According to reports in the Israeli media yesterday, the Army has ruled out reoccupying the Gaza Strip, as it has Palestinian cities in the West Bank, but is instead planning more assassinations and attacks on Hamas' infrastructure.

In what appeared to be part of such an operation, around 35 Israeli tanks moved into Gaza City on Monday. Soldiers surrounded a house belonging to Ahmad Ghandour, a Hamas militant, and blew it up. Israel radio reported the soldiers came under fire from Palestinians in the area, and Palestinian hospital officials said two Palestinians were killed in the exchange.

The timing of a new assault on Hamas may have to do with the group's improving firepower, and its growing power in the Gaza Strip while the Palestinian Authority is weakened by the Israeli military onslaught on the West Bank. It also comes amid new talks between Israeli and authority officials. Hamas has opposed talks and stood in the way of a ceasefire.

It emerged yesterday that six Hamas militants killed in a mysterious explosion in Gaza on Sunday were working to adapt a model aeroplane to carry explosives. Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, one of the leaders of Hamas' political wing, confirmed that the dead men had obtained the model aircraft from inside Israel and planned to use it in a militant attack.

Rantisi claimed that the model plane had been booby-trapped by the Israeli Army before it reached Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and detonated by remote control in order to kill the six Hamas militants - suggesting that, too, may have been part of an operation against Hamas. Another possibility is that the men died accidentally when the explosives they were handling went off.

The Israeli Army has not commented on the six men's deaths, but Raanan Gissin, an Israeli official close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said that the Government had known for some time that Hamas was trying to develop its own pilotless aircraft to use in attacks.

At the funeral for the six militants in Gaza yesterday, reportedly attended by 100,000 people, Rantisi vowed to avenge their deaths, saying: "There will be more martyrdom operations" - a euphemism for suicide bombings.

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Herald feature: The Middle East