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Israel kills two Palestinians, detains Hamas leaders

Posted on: Sunday, 6 August 2006, 16:58 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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