Israel kills two Palestinians, detains Hamas leaders

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel killed two Palestinians in the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank on Sunday and detained parliamentary
speaker Aziz Dweik, a Hamas leader, and another Hamas lawmaker,
Palestinian officials said.

A 13-year-old boy was killed in southern Gaza in an Israeli
air strike overnight as Israel continued to press its offensive
against militants across the coastal strip, medics said.

Later on Sunday, Israeli forces killed a wanted Palestinian
gunman near the northern West Bank town of Jenin, a spokesman
for the Islamic Jihad militant group said. He named the dead
gunman as 25-year-old Rashed al-Omary.

An army spokeswoman said the gunman was shot dead after
troops came under fire during an arrest raid.

Forces swept into the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday to
destroy what the army called “terrorist infrastructure” as part
of a wider offensive against militants, launched after gunmen
captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid on June 25.

In internal Palestinian violence, gunmen shot and killed
the head of Palestinian military intelligence for the northern
Gaza Strip and one of his bodyguards remained in hospital with
serious injuries, security officials said.

Military intelligence is controlled by President Mahmoud
Abbas, whose Fatah faction was defeated by the rival Hamas
movement in the Palestinian parliamentary election in January.

Israel’s Gaza offensive has killed at least 167
Palestinians, more than half of them civilians.

Israel has rejected demands by the three militant groups
that captured Corporal Gilad Shalit in the raid, which includes
Hamas, to trade the soldier for Palestinian prisoners.

A local representative of the International Committee of
the Red Cross said the groups had rejected its latest request
to visit the soldier.

Israel’s offensive has increased pressure on Hamas, which
rose to power in March, and had been under a Western aid
embargo to try to force it to recognize Israel, renounce
violence and accept peace deals.

Israeli forces detained eight members of the Palestinian
cabinet and 23 legislators in June after gunmen from Hamas and
two other militant groups infiltrated into Israel from Gaza and
kidnapped an Israeli soldier, who is still being held.

Three of the ministers have since been released.

“We condemn and reject this Israeli piracy,” Palestinian
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told Reuters after Dweik was
detained.

“He is the head of Hamas’s legislature and since Hamas is a
terrorist organization, he is a target for arrest,” an Israeli
army spokesman said in Tel Aviv.

Israeli forces later detained Palestinian lawmaker Fadel
Saleh of Hamas, drawing fire from President Mahmoud Abbas’s
office.

“We urge the international community to help release the
lawmakers and ministers who are held in Israeli jails,” said
Saeb Erekat, a top Abbas aide.

(Additional reporting by Wael al-Ahmed in Jenin)