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Israeli Missile Strike in Gaza Kills Palestinian Security Chief

Posted on: Friday, 9 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Joel Greenberg, Chicago Tribune

Jun. 9--JERUSALEM -- An Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip late Thursday killed a prominent militant who was the security chief of the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

Interior Minister Said Siyam, a Hamas leader, called the killing an assault on the government and said that militant groups vowing revenge had a right to respond.

The strike killed Jamal Abu Samhadana, 43, leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a group responsible for many recent rocket attacks on southern Israel and suspected in the 2003 bombing of an American diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip in which three security officers were killed.

Abu Samhadana was appointed in April as director general of the Interior Ministry, which oversees three Palestinian security branches and a new force staffed by militants.

The appointment was denounced by Israel and the United States and vetoed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but it was not withdrawn.

The Israeli army said Abu Samhadana was not the intended target of Thursday's strike, which hit a PRC training base in the ruins of a former Israeli settlement near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Three other militants were killed and several others wounded, hospital officials said.

Israel has attacked such training bases in the past and had tried to kill Abu Samhadana before.

Televised images of the aftermath of the strike showed his body carried on a stretcher by an emotional crowd, with young men reaching out to touch his bloodied face.

Several militant groups vowed revenge for the killing, and Islamic Jihad said it would respond with suicide bombings inside Israel.

"This targeting represents a new Zionist escalation against our people in general and against the government in particular," Siyam told the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera. "The occupation must bear the consequences . . . of this ugly crime.

"Neither we nor anyone in the world can stand by, or ask a people whose members are being killed, assassinated and bombed from planes to surrender," Siyam added. "It is the right of all peoples . . . and those under attack to defend themselves."

A former officer in the security forces, Abu Samhadana formed the PRC after the outbreak of the latest Palestinian uprising in 2000. Made up of militants from Fatah, Hamas and other factions, the group was responsible for a series of deadly attacks on Israeli settlers and soldiers in the Gaza Strip before the settlers were withdrawn from the area last year.

In other developments Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met Jordan's King Abdullah II in Amman and said he intended to meet Abbas to discuss ways to revive peace efforts.

Abdullah said only negotiations could solve Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, signaling his rejection of Olmert's plan to set Israel's borders with or without an agreement in four years. Under the plan, Israel would remove dozens of settlements from much of the West Bank but keep its main settlement blocs there.

Jordan is concerned that a unilateral Israeli move to draw its border with the West Bank might trigger an influx of Palestinians into the kingdom, potentially destabilizing the country.

"A two-state solution is the only solution we should seek," Abdullah said after meeting Olmert. "It is a solution that must be achieved through bilateral Palestinian-Israeli negotiations."

It was the second time this week that Olmert was urged by an Arab leader to pursue talks with the Palestinians rather than unilateral steps. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak pressed Olmert to resume negotiations with the Palestinians when the two met in Egypt on Sunday.

jogreenberg@tribune.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Chicago Tribune

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