Israel kills 7 Hamas gunmen as violence surges

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel killed seven Hamas gunmen in air
strikes on Friday in retaliation for a deadly Palestinian
rocket attack, resuming its assassination policy against
militants as a 5-month-old truce appeared to be unraveling.

The militant Islamic group Hamas said the back-to-back
missile strikes on cars in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would
“open the doors of hell” on Israel, and said it was
reconsidering its commitment to the ceasefire.

The surge of violence, one of the worst since Israel and
the Palestinian Authority declared an end to hostilities in
February, raised the possibility of disruptions to Israel’s
planned pullout of settlers from occupied Gaza next month.

The Israeli strikes followed the killing of a young Israeli
woman in a rocket barrage on Thursday that sparked the fiercest
internal fighting in years between militants and Palestinian
police, who confronted them trying to stop further salvoes.

Two Palestinian bystanders were killed in the gunbattles,
which raised Palestinian fears of civil war.

The Palestinian Authority declared a state of emergency in
Gaza. President Mahmoud Abbas, struggling to salvage the truce
and keep control in the face of a growing Hamas challenge,
ordered police to act amid Israeli threats of reprisals.

Israel launched a series of air raids against Hamas targets
in Gaza before dawn on Friday, causing no casualties.

Hours later, three Hamas militants were killed in an
Israeli helicopter strike near the major Jewish settlement of
Ariel in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian witnesses said.

Within minutes, Israeli helicopters over Gaza City launched
a missile into a car, tearing it apart and killing four Hamas
militants inside, hospital officials said.

Israel had reaffirmed its intention to resume its
assassination policy against militant commanders following an
Islamic Jihad suicide attack that killed five Israelis in the
coastal town of Netanya on Tuesday.

GAZA PULLOUT PLAN

The surge of bloodshed could complicate Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw all Jewish settlers
from Gaza starting month, a move international mediators see as
a possible springboard to renewed peace talks.

Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, wants to give the
impression the Israelis are being chased out. Israel has vowed
to crush any effort to disrupt evacuation of Gaza’s 8,500
settlers, who live cloistered from 1.3 million Palestinians.

“The calm is blowing away in the wind, and the Zionist
enemy is responsible for that,” Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri
said.

Palestinian officials and Hamas leaders exchanged
recriminations over the internal strife but also began talks to
calm the situation.

The police action suggested a possible shift in policy by
Abbas, who until now had been reluctant to crack down on
militants despite demands from Israel and the United States.

Hamas militants said Thursday’s deadly rocket attack on an
Israeli collective farm avenged the killing of a militant
leader in an Israeli army raid into the West Bank city of
Nablus, part of an offensive after Tuesday’s suicide bombing in
Israel.

Hamas militants fought Palestinian police who raided rocket
launching sites to stop further attacks. Militants fired
machine guns, hurled grenades and torched four police vehicles.

Fighting was concentrated mostly in Gaza’s Zeitoun
district, a Hamas stronghold, pitting Palestinian security
forces in armored vehicles against militants firing anti-tank
weapons.

Hospital sources said the two dead were unarmed teenagers.

Before the gunbattles subsided, 26 people were wounded, six
of them members of security forces and the rest civilians,
mostly caught in the crossfire, medics said.

In defiance, Hamas fired several more rockets into Israel
and Gaza settlements, causing damage but no casualties.

The fighting was the worst among Palestinians since the
mid-1990s when police killed more than a dozen protesters in
clashes with stone-throwers outside a Hamas-stronghold mosque.