Muslim Militants Kill Senior Israeli Army Commander in Gaza

Muslim militants shot and killed a senior Israeli commander and wounded three other soldiers in an ambush Friday in the occupied Gaza Strip, the army said.

The military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, said it killed Lt. Col. Meir Mintz, 36, one of only two officers of that rank slain since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began six years ago.

Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, the army’s chief of staff, told reporters at a briefing in Gaza that Mintz organized operations by special forces against wanted Palestinian activists. “He was one of our best people who did much in the struggle against the intifada (Palestinian uprising),” Barak said.

Meanwhile, Jewish settlers Friday placed signs identifying at least 88 sites in the occupied territories as future settlements as part of a campaign to scuttle Israel’s peace deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But the government, which signed a historic self-rule accord with the PLO in Washington in September, said such new settlements will not be allowed to stand.

In a separate incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a masked Palestinian teen-ager during a clash with stone-throwers near the West Bank town of Hebron, the army said.

Radio reports and witnesses to the attack in Gaza said the assailants fled after the shootings.

One witness, a 22-year-old who would give only his family name of Toom, said the gunmen parked in an orange grove and waited for a jeep carrying the Israeli officers to pass.

“We were sitting in a shop. (A gunman) asked everyone to close the windows and take cover,” he said.

Toom said a gunman stood behind a water pump and fired at the jeep as it came by.

He said that just before the shooting the gunmen shouted “Allahu akbar! (God is great)” and Izzidin al Qassam, the name of the military wing of the fundamentalist Hamas group, which opposes the Israel-PLO agreement.

Izzidin al Qassam issued a leaflet and scrawled graffiti on walls around the Gaza Strip claiming responsibility for the attack and linking it to the killing by Israeli undercover soldiers last month of its commander in Gaza, Imad Aqel.