8 Killed as Israel Attacks Militant Site

Israeli combat helicopters blasted a building housing Hamas offices in this Palestinian-ruled city Tuesday, killing eight people, including two senior leaders of the militant Islamic movement and two children.

Islamic militants swiftly vowed revenge, and 10 months after Palestinians launched their revolt against Israeli occupation, the deadly spiral of violence again began to hurtle out of control. It was the single deadliest day in two months, and Tuesday’s victims were the most prominent militants killed thus far. Massive protest marches filled streets in major Palestinian cities Tuesday night, while Israelis and Palestinians furiously exchanged fire on Jerusalem’s southern outskirts.

In unusually blunt language, the Bush administration deplored the attack as provocative and excessive. By any measure, the assault signaled the end of a partial cease-fire brokered by the CIA six weeks ago, and there were no prospects in sight for a return to dialogue.

“The Israeli people will pay a heavy price,” Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, told reporters at his headquarters in Gaza City. “Israel has exceeded all red lines. They will discover our blood is not cheap.”

In Nablus, the barrage on the seven-story downtown building was sudden and devastating. Men pulled blood-drenched bodies from the rubble, carrying them away on flimsy stretchers. Even as the bodies were being removed, a crowd broke into angry chants for revenge.

From the outside, the damage caused by the missiles seemed minimal: Two windows on the third floor were blown out and black soot covered the face of the white-stone structure. But inside, the office had been reduced to a blood-spattered rubble of concrete, broken furniture, loose wires and boards.

Teams worked to shore up sagging walls as journalists and curious onlookers crowded in. A single chandelier of copper and opaque glass was unscathed, as was the wall clock, which was still keeping time.

Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Israel’s forces attacked a meeting of Hamas activists who previously orchestrated terrorist attacks and were planning new ones.

The Nablus operation was part of the Israeli government’s policy of extrajudicial killings that aim to prevent such attacks. On Tuesday, Washington, Europe and numerous human rights organizations again condemned the widely criticized practice. Palestinians list 47 activists and bystanders who have been killed by Israeli forces in such operations since the current violence began in September.

Israeli security officials blame Nablus-based Hamas militants for roughly half the suicide bombings that have plagued Jewish cities in recent months, including the deadliest, the June 1 bombing outside a Tel Aviv disco that killed 21 Israelis. Many of the suicide bombers come from Nablus’ An Najah University, and Israeli officials say Hamas also operates a weapons factory in the city.

Israel’s main target apparently was Jamal Mansour, a top political leader of Hamas. He was killed, as were two Palestinian journalists and two brothers who were playing in the street while their mother visited a doctor’s office nearby.

Nadia Khader had brought her three children to her regular appointment at a chiropractor’s clinic on the ground floor of the building that housed the Hamas offices. She sent her two sons, Bilal, 10, and Ashaf, 7, outside to play. The two boys were killed instantly by shrapnel, relatives said, when at least two Israeli missiles slammed into the building above them. Their mother was hospitalized in a state of shock.

Samir Najjar had just finished praying in his living room when he heard the explosion. He ran to the balcony and saw black smoke pouring out of the building across the street. He saw the two children lying still on the sidewalk and a neighbor, badly bloodied, lying beside the twisted remains of the bicycle he was riding when the missiles hit.

Najjar ran to help his 7-year-old son, Munir, who had caught a piece of shrapnel in his shoulder.

“Of course, every action has a reaction,” Najjar said, his T-shirt still stained with blood. “The Palestinian people will not stay silent.” The Israeli attack, he said, made “all the Palestinian people” identify with the militants.

“I am an average civilian,” continued the 37-year-old construction worker, “but . . . they [the Israelis] kill innocent people, so we have to protect ourselves.”

Gissin, the Israeli spokesman, brushed aside suggestions that Tuesday’s airstrikes would only stoke the fires of revenge. He said the government regretted the deaths of the two boys but he argued that the operation was justified.

“There’s a simple choice: to strike at the terrorists before they reach Israel, taking into consideration there is damage to civilians, or do nothing and allow them to penetrate, and then you have another Dolphinarium,” he said, referring to the Tel Aviv disco. “The people of Israel will not tolerate inaction and will not allow another Dolphinarium.”

Late Tuesday, a five-member family of Jewish settlers from Kiryat Sefer came under Palestinian gunfire several miles west of the West Bank city of Ramallah. One person was critically wounded, and the others suffered lesser injuries.

Hamas leaders said the meeting in Nablus was being held by the movement’s political wing in a research center frequented by civilians. The sign that remained bolted to the wall next to the entrance identified it as the Palestinian Institute for Study and Information. Foreign journalists had often interviewed spokesmen for the Hamas movement there.

A Hamas spokesman, Ahmed Saker, said he was outside the office when the missiles struck. Those inside were killed, he said. Mansour, whom he described as the director of the Palestinian Institute for Islamic Studies, was not a military man, Saker insisted.

“He was in Israeli prison for 15 years, the Israelis deported him and then they let him return. If they had seen him as a security threat, they would not have let him return,” Saker said.

Hamas also oversees a vast grass-roots network of schools and charities. But, like all Hamas leaders, Mansour was a radical and opposed peace with Israel. A former journalist, he had also been jailed by the Palestinian Authority, which released him at the start of the intifada in early October. The rearrest of Mansour and scores of militants like him had been one of Israel’s chief demands. He reportedly had been moving about with armed guards in recent weeks.

Israel no longer makes distinctions between the political and military wings of Hamas, nor between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, both of which are now considered part of a “coalition of terrorists.”

The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack as a “criminal act of terror.” Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat reiterated his demand that world leaders send international monitors to Palestinian areas to serve as a buffer, a call that Israel rejects.

“This is a very dangerous conspiracy to liquidate our cadets,” Arafat told the Reuters news agency in Amman, the Jordanian capital, after talks with Jordan’s king, Abdullah II.

Last Wednesday, Israel killed another Hamas commander, Salah Darwaza, near Nablus, and on May 18 Israel used F-16 warplanes to bomb Nablus’ main prison. Eleven policemen and guards were killed, but the main target, Hamas leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, escaped unhurt.

In Tuesday’s blitz, another Nablus-based Hamas leader, Jamal Salim, 41, also was killed, as was a lower-ranking activist, Fahim Dawabshe, 32, a teacher. Two journalists who were also associated with Hamas were killed. An eighth person, another man who was in the Hamas office, also was killed.

Eiad Barrakat, 15, said a friend had called to tell him that Dawabshe, their religion teacher, had been killed in the attack. Visibly shaken, Eiad said he broke down and wept when he heard the news.

“And then I heard that also these small children died,” Eiad said. “And really, I cried. Fahim was a good man. He played basketball and tennis with us; he was a liberal man. When we asked him questions, he answered us. I said to him once that I have a girlfriend, he didn’t hit me. He was liberal.”

Across the tense city, shops were closed and traffic was light. Residents seemed braced for the next round of killings--the next action and reaction. The road leading south out of town was blocked with stones and debris, and edgy Israeli soldiers maintained a roadblock just outside the city limits.