Palestinian militant killed in Israeli missile strike

JERUSALEM - A prominent Palestinian militant was killed in an Israeli missile strike last night as he drove in a car through the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

The targeted killing-the first in Gaza for over a month-came as the Israel Defence Forces stepped up operations against mainly Islamic Jihad militants in response to Monday's suicide bombing by the faction which killed five Israelis.

Palestinian medics reported that shrapnel from the attack had injured ten other people, including three children under 10.

The man killed when the air-launched missile hit the white Subaru he was travelling in just after nightfall was named as Mahmoud el-Arquan, 29, head of the sniper unit in a different armed group, the Popular Resistance Committees.

The committee is a small and apparently well trained Gaza offshoot of the better known militant factions.

It was not immediately clear whether the assassination was part of a toughened policy against militants -expected to include targeted killings-- launched after the Netanya suicide bombing.

Israeli military sources said el-Arquan had been involved in weapons smuggling in southern Gaza as well as in an operation against a military outpost at the border earlier this year which killed one Israeli soldier and wounded two others.

Abu Radwan, a spokesman for the Popular Committees, said last night: "We will inevitably react.

The blood of our martyrs will never go to waste." Israel has also threatened more concerted efforts to end Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli border areas.

Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister, on Tuesday complained to Richard Jones, the US Ambassador, that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, was not doing the "minimum" required to stop militant attacks, saying: "All attempts to get Abu Mazen [Abbas] to act have failed," he said.

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