Sheikh Ahmed Yassin's successors

Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi

Rantissi, newly named as Hamas chief for the Gaza Strip, is considered a hard-liner.

He opposes any truce with Israel and rejects compromise with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

Rantissi, a 54-year-old paediatrician, who has served as Hamas' chief spokesman, will take on some of Yassin's duties.

Rantissi spent seven years in Israeli prisons and was expelled to Lebanon for one year in 1992.

He was jailed by the Palestinian Authority for 21 months in the late 1990s.

Rantissi escaped an Israeli assassination attempt last June.

Khaled Meshaal

Meshaal, Hamas' politburo chief living in exile in the Arab world, was named overall leader, succeeding Yassin.

Meshaal is a physics teacher in his late 40s.

He helped negotiate a truce last northern summer that temporarily halted Palestinians attacks on Israel. Israel has accused him of masterminding suicide bombings.

Meshaal was the target of an Israeli hit squad who were caught by Jordanian authorities in 1997 after they injected him with a drug during a daring daylight attack on an Amman street.

Jordan's King Hussein was so enraged by the attack he talked of hanging the captured Israelis unless they handed over an antidote to save Meshaal, who lay unconscious in hospital, his respiratory system collapsing under the effects of the drug.

Eventually Jordan returned Israel's would-be assassins in return for the antidote to save Meshaal and the release from Israeli jail of dozens of Palestinians, including Yassin.

Israeli security sources believe Meshaal is now mostly based in Syria.