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Israel kills 18 in Gaza, targets Hamas commanders

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 July 2006, 09:33 CDT

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel killed 18 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday including nine members of one family in an air strike that destroyed a residential building where the army said top Hamas commanders were meeting.

The air raid was among a series of attacks that coincided with an Israeli armored sweep into the central Gaza Strip, as the Jewish state broadened an offensive aimed at freeing a captured soldier and halting cross-border rocket fire.

The army said the strike on the three-storey building near Gaza City wounded Mohammad Deif, overall leader of the governing Hamas movement's armed wing and Israel's most wanted man.

A spokesman for Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, one of three groups whose kidnapping of Corporal Galid Shalit on June 25 led Israel to launch its first ground operations in Gaza since quitting the territory last year, denied Deif was hurt.

The air strike killed a local Hamas leader, Nabil Abu Selmeya, his wife and seven sons and daughters aged 7 to 19, medics said. His eldest son, who was not at home, survived.

Palestinian medics said Israel's air raids and tank shelling had killed a total of 18 people on Wednesday, including militants and one policeman.

Israel has rejected calls from Hamas for negotiations on a prisoner swap for Shalit, whose abduction has triggered the worst fighting between Israelis and Palestinians since 2004. The Gaza offensive has killed 74 Palestinians and one soldier.

Israel's army said Deif and other armed wing commanders were meeting in the Gaza building. They were targeted because intelligence showed they were planning attacks, it said.

"The fact that the meeting between Deif and the others took place in a residential building is an indication they intended to use the inhabitants as a human shield to protect themselves," a military spokesman said.

One senior Hamas commander, who was not in a life-threatening condition, was among the 35 wounded.

RARELY SEEN

Deif, in his 40s and who is rarely seen in public, has escaped several Israeli assassination attempts. Those close calls have turned him into a folk hero to many Palestinians.

"Israel will pay for daring to hunt the lion of Qassam," said one Hamas activist who gave his name as Ahmed, speaking near the wrecked building, a tangle of twisted metal, broken concrete and blood.

The scene at the bombed Gaza building recalled Israel's assassination of Hamas military commander Salah Shehada in 2002 by dropping a one-tonne bomb on his home. The death of 14 other people in that attack drew a wave of international criticism.

Deif later replaced Shehada.

The Israeli army sent dozens of armored vehicles into central Gaza before dawn, effectively cutting the territory in two.

The offensive has piled pressure on the Hamas government, already reeling from a Western aid embargo.

On Israel's northern border, the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed up to seven Israelis in violence further inflaming Middle East tensions.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams at Kissufim and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem)

Source: REUTERS

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