Israel Targets Hamas Leader in Missile Attack That Kills 2

Israeli helicopters launched a missile attack Thursday aimed at the man who has long been deemed Israel’s most wanted terrorist, striking a car and killing at least two people inside. But the militant group Hamas denied that leader Mohammed Deif was among the dead.

Two missiles struck the olive-green Mercedes-Benz on a crowded, sun-baked street in Gaza City, turning the car into a smoldering heap of twisted metal and body parts. Forty bystanders were injured, including 15 children, hospital officials said.

Hamas said two of its members inside the car and a bystander were killed. Israeli television showed scenes captured minutes after the attack in which a third man was shown being pulled from the back seat of the Mercedes. It was not clear whether he was alive. “Deif was not in the car, thank God,” said Hamas spokesman Abdulaziz Rantisi, who nevertheless vowed revenge against the Israelis. “We’ll hit them everywhere,” he said.

Israeli officials put the nation on high alert. They clung to the hope that Deif was dead, but they acknowledged that they had not been able to confirm his fate. Late Thursday, Israeli TV quoted unidentified security officials as saying “the probability is high” that he was killed. But Culture, Science and Sports Minister Matan Vilnai told Israel’s Army Radio later: “The reports I received from our people were that [Deif] was indeed injured but did not suffer a life-threatening injury.”

Deif, head of the Hamas military wing in the Gaza Strip, has been Public Enemy No. 1 in Israel for six years--ever since his predecessor at the top of the wanted list, bomb maker Yehiya Ayash, known as “the Engineer,” was killed by a booby-trapped cellular telephone. No one has ever claimed responsibility, but it has been widely assumed that the phone bomb was the work of Israeli intelligence.

Israeli officials said Deif was the mastermind behind dozens of suicide bombings that claimed hundreds of Israeli lives.

“Look, he’s the most important army commander in Hamas,” said Yohanan Tsoref, a research fellow at Israel’s International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. “He is the most important not only from the professional point of view but from the symbolic point of view.”

It was not believed to be the first time Israel has targeted Deif. In August 2001, he was reported to have been in a car that was hit by an Israeli missile in Gaza City. Nearby residents said Deif had gotten out of the car before the missile hit and was seen fleeing. However, both Hamas and Israeli officials denied that he had been there.

Deif was arrested by the Palestinian Authority in May 2000 but spent only five months in jail. At 36, Deif had become “sort of a father figure” to young Hamas militants because of his extensive experience in carrying out attacks against Israel, Tsoref said.

“But you know,” Tsoref added, “Hamas is not an organization of one man.” If Deif is dead, Tsoref said, he would be quickly replaced.

The attack came on a tumultuous day in Gaza and the West Bank.

The day began with reports that a Palestinian--later identified as a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement--had been killed by Israeli soldiers while trying to attack a Jewish settlement in the northern Gaza Strip. Then came word that a Hamas activist and an Israeli soldier were killed in a gunfight in the West Bank village of Labed, east of Tulkarm.

Hospital officials in Hebron said a 14-month-old Palestinian girl had died after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers. And late Thursday, four Israelis, including a month-old baby, were shot and wounded in the West Bank city, according to Israeli media.

Through all this, Israeli troops maintained their cordon around the wrecked remains of Arafat’s office in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Arafat and about 250 other Palestinians in effect been imprisoned there for a week, part of the Israeli response to a Sept. 19 attack in Tel Aviv that killed the suicide bomber and six civilians.

The campaign against Arafat has been sharply criticized, both internationally and, to a lesser degree, within Israel. Arafat has been struggling to maintain power and has recently condemned attacks on civilians, leading some Israelis to question why Prime Minister Ariel Sharon didn’t go after the more radical Hamas leaders instead. Sharon answered by saying that he did intend to attack Hamas, whose strongholds are primarily in Gaza.

On Monday, Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships launched an assault against parts of Gaza City, destroying 13 reputed weapons workshops and killing nine people.

Those killed in Thursday’s missile attack were identified as Abdel Rahim Hamdan, 40, and Issa Baraka, 35, both members of the Hamas military wing. Rantisi, the Hamas spokesman, said he went to the hospital to identify them. There were conflicting reports about whether Deif might have been injured in the attack, but Rantisi insisted that the Hamas leader was not in the car that was attacked or another car damaged nearby and that he was fine.

Israel has a long-standing policy of assassinating militant Palestinian leaders. Such killings have typically been followed by a fresh wave of attacks against Israel.

In the last such attack, on July 23, Israeli forces killed Hamas military commander Salah Shehada. Fourteen Palestinian civilians also died, and Hamas vowed to kill 100 Israelis in reprisal.

Hamas went on to claim responsibility for three attacks: a bombing at Hebrew University on July 31, in which nine people died; a bus bombing Aug. 4 in which nine Israeli soldiers and civilians died; and the Sept. 19 blast in Tel Aviv.

“What I’m afraid of,” said Yoram Meital, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Ben Gurion University, “is that we are in the beginning, maybe, of a new cycle of violence, more intensive than we saw before, between Israel and the Hamas.”