Israel pounds Gaza in raids after suicide attack

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – An Israeli warplane and artillery gunners
attacked rocket launch sites in Gaza on Thursday hours after
Israel killed a senior militant in response to a suicide
bombing at a shopping mall.

The new violence tested an already shaky ceasefire and a
peace process on hold as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
faced a campaign for re-election in a March poll.

Witnesses said an Israeli fighter jet bombed an open area
in northern Gaza in a predawn raid, after soldiers fired dozens
of artillery rounds at rocket launch sites in the northern Gaza
Strip. None of the assaults caused any injury.

The Israeli army said its aircraft had fired the missile to
cut off an access road to sites from where militants had
launched rockets at Israeli towns since a senior militant was
killed in an Israeli air strike on his car on Wednesday.

The Popular Resistance Committees had vowed revenge for the
death of field commander Mahmud el-Arqan, 29, in Wednesday’s
raid in the Gaza town of Rafah. Ten other people were wounded
in that attack, including three children struck by shrapnel.

“Israel has opened the gates to hell by assassinating one
of our leaders,” Abu Abir, a Popular Committees spokesman,
said.

Israel also besieged a building near the West Bank town of
Jenin and arrested two Islamic Jihad militants there, in a
further retaliatory measure approved by the security cabinet
after Monday’s bomb blast killed five in the town of Netanya.

The bombing had been claimed by Islamic Jihad, a different
group from that to which el-Arqan belonged. Israeli military
sources said he had collaborated with Islamic Jihad in
launching attacks against Israelis.

Islamic Jihad called the bombing a response to previous
Israeli attacks on its members.

DIMINISHED HOPES

The latest fighting has further diminished world hopes that
Israel’s withdrawal of forces from the Gaza Strip in September
would lead to a quick resumption of peace talks.

Ahead of a national election on March 28, Sharon, an
ex-general, has to face down rightist political foes who accuse
him of surrendering to the militants by relinquishing land
Israel had captured in a 1967 Middle East War.

Israel also wants to prod Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas to crack down and disarm militants.

Abbas has condemned the bombing and Palestinian police have
arrested more than a dozen suspects.

But his spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, criticised Israel’s
killing of the militant leader as “dangerous … harmful to the
peace process and harmful to the Arab and international efforts
exerted to maintain calm.”

(MIDEAST: Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; editing by Philippa
Fletcher, Reuters
Messaging:allyn.fisher.reuters.com@reuters.net))