Israelis Blow Up Palestinian Guerrilla Leader

In a nasty, bitter-end battle that has come to characterize the five-year Palestinian rebellion against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a wanted guerrilla leader fatally shot a police commando and wounded four others early Friday before troops blew up the house where he had holed up, killing him.

Tracked by Israeli security forces to this small village in the stony hills south of the town of Janin, a center of resistance to the occupation, Issam Moussa Daraghmeh held out against a barrage of anti-tank rockets, grenades and machine-gun and rifle fire.

He survived an intense two-hour blaze before luring in a commando squad and shooting dead its leader, Israeli officers said. Unwilling to risk further casualties among their own forces, senior Israeli commanders then brought in army demolition specialists to blow up the hilltop house where Daraghmeh had holed up.

After the flames had died and the explosion’s dust cleared, the only trace of Daraghmeh, army officers said, was his blackened Karl-Gustav machine gun, a pistol and ammunition clips he had emptied in the nightlong battle.

Daraghmeh’s willingness to die for his cause--two companions had surrendered when they saw the house surrounded--seems likely to make him a local hero in Anza, another martyr of the intifada , the rebellion against the occupation, and another symbol of Palestinian resistance.

The overnight clash at Anza, 40 miles north of Jerusalem, was emblematic of the daily battles now being fought with Israeli security forces, more by well-armed guerrillas than stone-throwing youths.

“The intifada has become a war of the hard men, ours versus theirs,” a senior Israeli official said in Jerusalem.

Described by Israeli officers as a commander in Islamic Jihad, Daraghmeh was wanted for the roadside bomb that killed a woman and injured eight other people in October when it blew up a van carrying Israelis to Tel Aviv. He had also led his unit in armed attacks on Israeli troops and settlers in the Janin area over the last three months, Israeli military authorities said.