Israelis Kill Leader of Hezbollah : Mideast: Ten others die in air strikes in Lebanon motivated by the slayings of three soldiers. Shiite chieftains vow to take revenge.

The leader of the militant, pro-Iranian Hezbollah organization was killed Sunday when his motorcade was attacked by Israeli helicopter gunships, according to press reports from southern Lebanon.

The dispatches, confirmed by Hezbollah in a statement issued at its headquarters in Beirut, said that 39-year-old Sheik Abbas Moussawi, his wife, Siham, and the youngest of their six children, 5-year-old Hussein, died under Israeli rocket fire on a rural road between the southern Lebanese towns of Jibsheet and Sharqiya, 10 miles southeast of the port of Tyre.

A report from the nearby city of Sidon said that at least eight other people were killed and 29 were wounded in a series of raids carried out by Israeli combat helicopters and jet fighters.

Sunday’s air strikes into Lebanon came in a clear retaliatory response to Saturday’s slaying of three Israeli servicemen south of the Lebanese frontier by suspected Arab terrorists. The brutal deaths of the Israeli soldiers--one had his throat slit and the other two were stabbed in their sleep--inflamed feelings in Israel, and the deaths of Moussawi and his family are expected to have the same effect on the Shiite Muslim majority in Lebanon.

Hezbollah (Party of God), an umbrella organization sheltering a number of militant Shiite Muslim groups, is not new to the annals of violence in the Middle East. Its main mark up to now has been its role in the kidnapings of more than 100 Western hostages over the past eight years. The last of the hostages held by groups with Hezbollah ties, American journalist Terry A. Anderson, was freed only two months ago.

Shiite chieftains vowed revenge. Calling the raid a “barbaric crime,” the spiritual leader of Lebanon’s Shiites, Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, said: “I call upon all resistance fighters to escalate their jihad (holy war) against Israel.”

In Washington, an unusual Sunday statement by the State Department reflected official U.S. concern over the events.

“We are concerned at the rising cycle of violence in the Middle East in recent days,” the statement said. “We regret the loss of lives in Israel and Lebanon . . . and urge all concerned to exercise maximum restraint.”

In Jerusalem, one government official said that Israel has been targeting Moussawi for several months in hopes of discouraging armed assaults by Hezbollah guerrillas in the self-proclaimed security zone it patrols north of the Israeli frontier in Lebanon. A recent botched commando raid on Jibsheet was reportedly an attempt to kidnap Moussawi.

Israel is also displeased with Hezbollah for refusing to release an Israeli captive in its control, even after Israel freed several Arab prisoners as a good-will gesture.

Israeli television linked the fatal raid on Moussawi’s caravan with the prisoner problem, and during an interview on the same program, Defense Minister Moshe Arens linked Moussawi with the imprisonment of two wounded Israeli soldiers who died in captivity. Arens added that Moussawi’s death would serve as “a lesson for all terrorists.”

“It wasn’t by chance that he was hit,” Arens said as he took responsibility for the raid. “They have to know that any group that starts up with Israel will get paid back. We have a long reach.”

The Israeli government blamed the self-styled Black Panthers for Saturday’s killing of the three Israeli soldiers. The Panthers, affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization, are loosely formed groups in the West Bank made up of fugitive Palestinians who have gone into hiding and engaged on a campaign of killing Palestinian “informers.”

The ability of guerrillas to infiltrate an Israeli army camp raised an outcry of concern among military officials and politicians. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir ordered an investigation.

The unusual step of ordering a raid on Lebanon for killings that originated in Israel was apparently designed to ease criticism that Shamir’s government has been lax in dealing with the ongoing Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Usually, air assaults on guerrilla bases in Lebanon are reserved for retaliation against assaults into the Israeli security zone or attacks across the border itself.

The Israeli army has been unable to find the perpetrators of a series of ambushes on settlers in the West Bank and Gaza and, so far, has not found the three suspected Palestinians who infiltrated a basic training camp and killed the three Israeli soldiers Saturday.

The Shamir government is also defending itself from right-wing charges that it is negotiating with PLO fronts at peace talks due to resume in Washington next week. PLO officials, with American acquiescence, have been playing a behind-the-scenes role in the talks.

Arens blamed PLO chief Yasser Arafat and his Fatah faction for the Saturday killings. Arens indicated that he would try to erase PLO influence from the peace negotiations. “There’s no doubt that a diplomatic probe will be made . . . into the role of . . . Arafat in the peace process while at the same time he deals in terrorism,” Arens said.

Dov Shilansky, speaker of Israel’s Parliament and a member of Shamir’s ruling Likud Party, called on the government to stop negotiating with anyone claiming allegiance to the PLO. “Israel in these days,” he said, “must reconsider its policy on negotiations with people who claim to be representing terrorist organizations.”

The PLO argues that attacks on soldiers and armed settlers are legitimate means of battling Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

For the moment, there was no indication that the slow-paced Middle East peace talks would be fatally derailed by this weekend’s violence. Palestinian and Israeli delegates are preparing to leave for Washington, where the next round is scheduled to begin Feb. 24, and both Syria and Lebanon announced Sunday that their representatives will attend.

The targets of Sunday’s initial Israeli raids into Lebanon were PLO-controlled refugee camps outside Sidon on the coast south of Beirut. Then, at 4:30 p.m., according to press reports, two Israeli helicopter gunships fired four rockets into Moussawi’s convoy, blasting the Mercedes-Benz sedan in which he and his family were riding and damaging two Range Rovers carrying his bodyguards.

Moussawi, a short, heavyset man, bearded and always wearing a turban like all leaders of the Shiite Hezbollah, took over the organization as general secretary last spring.

Following Iran’s lead, Hezbollah has strongly opposed the U.S.-initiated Middle East peace talks and, since Moussawi took over its leadership, the Shiite organization has stepped up attacks in southern Lebanon against Israeli soldiers in their security zone and against the Jerusalem government’s proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army.

Over the past several months, Hezbollah spokesmen have claimed responsibility for a series of remote-controlled bombings that have killed and injured Israeli and SLA soldiers.

Their basic weaponry is small arms, but the radio-controlled bombs have given the guerrillas an extended reach, and some reports say they have received some old Soviet-made SAM-7 antiaircraft rockets.

In 1989, Israeli commandos swooped down on Jibsheet, not far from the site of Sunday’s attack on Moussawi’s motorcade, and abducted the leading Hezbollah cleric--and Israelis say commander--in the south, Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid. He remains in Israeli custody.

Nick Williams reported from Nicosia and Daniel Williams reported from Jerusalem.