Israel Kills Hamas Official

A top military leader of the radical Hamas movement whom Israel has hunted for months and tried to kill at least two times before died Friday in an Israeli helicopter missile attack, Palestinian sources said.

Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, who is on Israel’s list of 10 most-wanted Palestinians, died along with two of his assistants when a taxi they were in was hit by a rocket north of the West Bank city of Nablus, the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement this morning.

The three men were among seven Palestinians who were killed violently Friday, their deaths stoking hatreds and tension here on the eve of the new U.S. diplomatic push to pacify the region after 14 blood-soaked months. Former Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns are due here Monday. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has instructed the pair to secure a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Friday night that he didn’t know whether Abu Hanoud had been targeted but said his death would be a positive development.

“If this was, indeed, Hanoud, then it is very significant that one of the arch-terrorists who was sending suicide bombers is no longer with us,” spokesman Raanan Gissin said.

Hours later, the prime minister’s office confirmed the killing in a statement listing some of the Hamas figure’s actions against Israel and alleging that he was planning further attacks.

Abu Hanoud is believed to be the mastermind of two 1997 suicide bombings in Jerusalem that left 43 people dead, including five assailants. In the last 15 months, two attempts by Israel to kill the Hamas leader failed. In August 2000, three Israeli soldiers were killed in one of the attempted assassinations.

Palestinians said the missile that slammed into the taxi instantly killed two brothers, Mahmoun Rashin Hashaika and Ahmed Rashin Hashaika, who reportedly were Abu Hanoud’s assistants. A third man reportedly fled the incinerated car but was struck by another missile. His body was so badly mangled that identification was initially impossible.

But this morning, a spokesman for Jenin Hospital in the West Bank told The Times that Hamas had announced over loudspeakers in Jenin’s mosques that Abu Hanoud was dead. The spokesman, who declined to be identified, said the hospital had been unable to positively identify the third body.

Hamas official Abdel Aziz Rantissi vowed that the group would avenge Abu Hanoud’s death.

“Experience has shown that the military wing of Hamas reacts to the Israeli crimes and always strikes back,” Rantissi said in the Gaza Strip. “God willing, there will be a painful response.”

Israel has killed dozens of suspected militants, and some bystanders, in so-called targeted killings since the outbreak of violence in late September 2000. Palestinians denounce the attacks as assassinations.

New Reports on Cause of Blast That Killed Boys

The latest attack came as Israeli and Palestinian politicians demanded an urgent investigation into an explosion that killed five Palestinian schoolboys in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, amid widespread reports that the blast was caused by a bomb planted by the Israeli army--and not an unexploded tank shell, as Palestinians first speculated. Initial reports said four boys had been killed.

U.S. State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker called the boys’ deaths a tragic accident.

“We understand that the Israeli army has begun an investigation into the circumstances of these deaths, and we expect that the investigation will thoroughly determine what happened,” Reeker said in Washington. “This incident . . . is a strong reminder of why both sides should do all they can to end the violence, reduce tensions and resume negotiations.”

As the boys were buried Friday afternoon, Israeli forces shot dead a 15-year-old Palestinian from among a group of youths who had emerged from the funeral to throw stones at an army post, reports from Gaza said. Later in the day, two Palestinian cousins died in a blast near Nablus; Palestinians said they may have been building a bomb.

In a separate incident, Palestinians reported that a man was killed and three other people were wounded when Israeli troops in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, fired on a car. The army spokesman’s office confirmed that troops opened fire on a car that the army said came too close to an Israeli checkpoint and whose driver failed to heed warning shots.

The five Gazan boys, ages 6 to 14, who died Thursday were killed as they walked to school and stumbled upon, or possibly played with, an explosive device on a sandy ridge near their home. Although it was not clear what kind of device killed the boys, the dominant theory was that it was a tank shell fired by Israeli forces in the last week that had not detonated.

But if the explosive was in fact planted by Israeli special forces to kill Palestinian gunmen, as several Israeli newspapers and radio commentators reported Friday, then the incident takes on a more serious dimension.

“If something is awry on our side, then all the masks must be removed, and perhaps someone needs to stand judgment if he acted improperly or with recklessness,” Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh, a member of the center-left Labor Party and a former deputy defense minister, told Israel Radio on Friday.

The ridge where the boys were killed has been used frequently by Palestinian gunmen to shoot at nearby Jewish settlements and an Israeli army outpost, according to both the Palestinian residents and army spokesmen. But it is also a path used regularly by children on their way to the Abdullah Seyam elementary and high school in the Gazan town of Khan Yunis.

Major Israeli newspapers reported Friday that the army for some time has been planting bombs in Gazan sites used by Palestinians who fire guns and mortar shells at Israeli targets. The reports quoted an unidentified senior Israeli army officer as saying the killings of the boys was a “serious mishap.”

The Maariv newspaper reported that Israeli special forces had infiltrated Khan Yunis about a week ago and planted the bomb, in a mission approved by the army’s top commanders and the political echelon.

Spokesmen for the army and for Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer would neither confirm nor deny the reports. Ben-Eliezer said in a statement that the incident was under investigation, and he expressed regret over the “human tragedy and loss of innocent lives.” He also emphasized that the site was a Palestinian firing position in what he described as an uninhabited area. (There are in fact homes about 200 yards away, past a field of green pepper and eggplant and several greenhouses.)

Reported Planting of Bombs Criticized

Opposition leader Yossi Sarid, a legislator from the leftist Meretz Party, was sharply critical of the army’s reported planting of bombs in Palestinian areas, even when intended as what the military terms a defensive action.

“That’s a targeted hit?” Sarid said. “Do you know who will pass by the area [where the bomb is planted]? It’s a residential area. What kind of bombs do you place in an area where schoolchildren pass by?”

The boys, two sets of brothers from the same extended family, were buried in Khan Yunis on Friday after noon prayers, in a state funeral that drew thousands of mourners. Some fired weapons and demanded revenge against Israel. Children carried pictures of their dead classmates. The Palestinian Authority declared today an official day of mourning.

Palestinian officials also demanded an inquiry--by international monitors--into what they called “the murder of innocent children.”

In Gaza, the Palestinian public security chief, Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaydeh, told the Reuters news agency that his agency’s investigation had determined that the children were killed when they hit a booby-trapped device that had been planted by Israeli troops. Residents of the boys’ neighborhood told Palestinian officials that they saw an Israeli army bulldozer working near the area of the blast in the middle of the night earlier in the week.