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Senior Islamic Jihad commander killed in Gaza blast

Posted on: Wednesday, 1 March 2006, 07:02 CST

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Islamic Jihad's most senior commander in the Gaza Strip was killed on Wednesday by an explosion that tore through his car, the Palestinian militant group said, blaming the Israeli army, which denied involvement.

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen shot dead an Israeli outside a Jewish settlement, the army said.

Witnesses to the death of Abu al-Waleed al-Dahdouh, head of Islamic Jihad's armed wing in the Gaza Strip, said his car blew up as he opened one of its doors and that an Israeli military aircraft was flying overhead at the time.

"The Israeli army did not operate in Gaza," a military spokeswoman said. "It wasn't us."

Describing Dahdouh's death as an assassination, Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called for international pressure on Israel to return to the negotiating table.

Prospects for a resumption of peacemaking have dimmed since the Islamic militant group Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, scored a crushing victory over Abbas's Fatah faction in a January 25 election.

The Israeli army has acknowledged killing dozens of militants in strikes in the Gaza Strip since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000. Dozens of gunmen have also died when explosives they were transporting detonated prematurely.

Chanting "revenge, revenge," hundreds of Islamic Jihad gunmen gathered outside Gaza's Shifa Hospital after hearing that Dahdouh's body had been brought there.

"This is an Israeli assassination that killed one of our most important commanders," said Khader Habib, an Islamic Jihad leader.

Abu Adallah, a spokesman for the group, said: "Our rockets will rain down on (Israelis). Islamic Jihad's armed wing will not remain silent and will respond with all its might to avenge the death of its leader."

Dahdouh was killed hours after militants in Gaza fired a rocket toward the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon.

Israeli interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged in the run-up to a March 28 general election to take strong measures against militant groups behind such attacks.

At the entrance to the Jewish settlement of Migdalim in the West Bank, two Palestinian gunmen shot an Israeli in the head, killing him, a military spokeswoman.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack at a petrol station on a main road.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul, Megan Goldin and Tali Caspi in Jerusalem and Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah)

Source: REUTERS

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