Israel kills 5 Hamas gunmen as violence surges

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

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

The militant Islamic group Hamas said the back-to-back
missile strikes 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 flare-up of violence, one of the worst since Israel and
the Palestinian Authority declared an end to hostilities in
February, raised the prospect 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 attack on Thursday that sparked the fiercest
internal fighting in years between militants and Palestinian
police, who confronted them trying to stop further salvoes.

Two bystanders were killed and 26 people wounded in the
gunbattles, which raised Palestinian fears of civil war, and
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 harsh reprisals.

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

Hours later, one militant was killed in a helicopter strike
on a mountain hideout near the Jewish settlement of Ariel in
the occupied West Bank, Palestinian security sources said. They
originally reported three Hamas men were killed but later said
the other two were either wounded or had escaped.

Within minutes, helicopters over Gaza launched a missile
into a car, tearing it apart and killing four militants inside,
hospital officials said. Hamas officials said the car was
carrying a cache of makeshift Qassam rockets.

The Israel army said it targeted “wanted terrorists” in the
West Bank strike and that the Hamas cell hit in Gaza was on the
way to carry out rocket attacks.

ISRAELI RESUMES ASSASSINATION POLICY

Israel had reaffirmed its intention to resume what it calls
“targeted killings” of top militants following an Islamic Jihad
suicide bombing that killed five Israelis on Tuesday. It had
suspended the internationally condemned policy under the truce.

The Palestinian Authority said the Israeli strikes would
only lead to escalating violence.

Defying Israel’s army and Palestinian police, Hamas kept up
rocket volleys into southern Israel and mortar fire on Gaza
settlements, causing damage but no casualties.

The surge in bloodshed could complicate Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw all Jewish settlers
from Gaza starting in mid-August, 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 its 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.

But Israeli army chief Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz said Hamas had
“removed itself from maintaining the rules of the ceasefire..”

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

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 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 trying to stop further attacks.

Militants fired machine guns, hurled grenades and torched
four police vehicles in fighting concentrated mostly in a Hamas
stronghold. But gunbattles had subsided by Friday evening.
(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah and
Corinne Heller in Jerusalem)