Israeli air strike kills Gaza security chief

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel killed a Palestinian security chief
in a Gaza Strip air strike on Thursday, witnesses said, the
first time the Jewish state has killed a senior appointee of
the Hamas government that took office in March.

Jamal Abu Samhadana, a leader of the Popular Resistance
Committees (PRC) militant group who doubled as Interior
Ministry supervisor, died along with three other Palestinians
in the missile attack outside the southern town of Khan Younis.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the after-dark strike
targeted a PRC training camp rather than anyone specific. But
the Palestinian government described it as an assassination.

“Israel knows that Abu Samhadana works in the government
and by killing him they are sending a message that all its
members, from the prime minister to junior employees, are
targets for death,” said cabinet secretary Ghazi Hamad.

Abu Samhadana was on Israel’s wanted list for his role in a
more than 5-year-old Palestinian armed revolt. The PRC was also
suspected in the bombing of a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Gaza in
2003 which killed three Americans. It denied involvement.

Abu Samhadana’s appointment in April to the Interior
Ministry, which oversees Palestinian security forces, angered
President Mahmoud Abbas, who had been struggling to salvage
peacemaking with Israel since Hamas took power a month before.

Hamas, an Islamic group sworn to the Jewish state’s
destruction, crushed Abbas’s more moderate Fatah faction in
January elections but has struggled to govern after Western
countries and Israel imposed economic sanctions.

Though he hailed from Fatah, Abu Samhadana enjoyed good
relations with Hamas, thanks largely to his reputation as a
military leader and survivor of several Israeli air strikes.

He would patrol Rafah, his hardscrabble hometown in
southern Gaza, wearing khaki fatigues. On Thursday, thousands
of Rafah residents mobbed the hospital where his body was being
held and bore it through the streets weeping and screaming for
revenge.

“The Zionist entity and Zionist settlements near Gaza will
not feel security and safety any more. Our rockets will rain
into the Zionist entity and our heroes will blow themselves up
among their dirty bodies,” said a PRC spokesman.

A coalition of militant groups, the PRC has played a
leading role in cross-border rocket from Gaza since Israel
withdrew from the coastal territory last year after 38 years of
occupation.