Revenge Bombs Injure at Least 9 in Gaza Strip

At least nine people were hurt, most of them lightly, in a series of explosions near Jewish settlements today in the largely Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, Israel Radio said.

Radio reports said a suicide car bomber was killed in one of at least two blasts.

Palestinians said the bombings were carried out to avenge the assassination of Fathi Shikaki, the head of the radical Islamic Jihad movement who was gunned down last Thursday in Malta. The Islamic Jihad blames Israel for the killing.

On Wednesday, Muslim guerrillas bent on revenge killed two Israeli-backed militiamen and wounded five Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.

Palestinian gunmen also seriously wounded an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank. There was no claim of responsibility for that shooting, but Shikaki’s followers blame Israeli agents for the assassination and have vowed revenge.

Tens of thousands of mourners chanting anti-Israeli slogans accompanied Shikaki’s coffin Wednesday to a cemetery near the Syrian capital, Damascus, and thousands more demonstrated in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

In southern Lebanon, sources with the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army said two militiamen were killed and three wounded when guerrillas firing machine guns and antitank rockets assaulted their post at Bisri, north of Israel’s southern Lebanese occupation zone.

Israeli security sources said four Israeli soldiers were wounded when guerrillas fired at their post and a bomb exploded near a patrol on the edge of the zone. A fifth soldier was hurt in another incident in the zone.

In Beirut, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attacks and said they were to avenge Shikaki.