Israelis Kill Hamas Pair in Gaza City

An Israeli missile strike in the crowded heart of Gaza City Tuesday night killed a pair of top Hamas militants, the apparent targets, but also left at least four passersby dead and dozens of others wounded, many of them women and children, witnesses and hospital officials said.

The strike -- which came as the dusky streets were thronged with Palestinians heading to evening prayers, returning home from work or hurrying to shop before the stores closed -- reduced the white Subaru in which the two militants were traveling to a smoking, twisted ruin.

Several hundred curiosity seekers swiftly gathered to see what had happened -- whereupon, according to Palestinian witnesses, at least two more missiles rained down, leaving dead and wounded scattered across a narrow street in the Zeitoun neighborhood, a Hamas stronghold.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” friends and relatives of the dead and injured cried as they searched among the bleeding bodies. At Gaza City’s main hospital, Shifa, police had to hold back a panicky crowd of up to 1,000 people who tried to storm the emergency room to ascertain the fate of loved ones.

Nearly 50 people were injured, about 10 of them critically, according to the hospital’s director, Dr. Nassez Shaleh. A 12-year-old boy was among the dead, he said.

This was the first strike of its kind in the Palestinian territories since the outbreak of war in Iraq, although Israel has carried out dozens of such “targeted killings” of Palestinian militants in the course of the 30-month-old intifada.

Human rights groups denounce such killings, saying they amount to extrajudicial executions, but Israel insists it has the right to stage preemptive strikes against those planning suicide bombings or to hit at those who have already managed to carry out attacks.

Israel had no immediate comment on Tuesday’s strike. It does not always acknowledge having carried out operations targeting Palestinian militant leaders.

Many Palestinians had feared that the advent of war in Iraq would bring a crushing Israeli military move against them, particularly in Gaza.

But although Israeli troops have staged limited incursions in Gaza towns and refugee camps that have left several civilians dead, no large-scale offensive has occurred.

In the West Bank, a drive to arrest wanted Palestinian militants has picked up pace in recent weeks. In a mass roundup last week in the Tulkarm refugee camp, for example, more than 1,000 males between the ages of 15 and 45 were detained for questioning and prevented for at least 24 hours from returning home. Israel said it managed to snare several wanted men, including a leader of the militant group Islamic Jihad, but human rights groups said they were troubled by the scale and the indiscriminate nature of the roundup.

Palestinian sources identified the two men killed in Tuesday night’s strike as a top leader of the Hamas military wing, Saad Arabeed, and a lieutenant, Ashraf Halaby. A Hamas spokesman, Ismail Haniyeh, vowed to avenge the deaths.

“We confirm that the occupiers’ missiles targeted a leader of the military wing of Hamas and one of his assistants, but the resistance will retaliate for this cowardly, criminal attack,” Haniyeh said. “These assassinations will kindle a terrible anger against the Zionist enemy.”

In the weeks before the war in Iraq, Israel carried out a concerted campaign against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, saying it wanted to strike at the group’s infrastructure and also destroy its ability to fire crude rockets at Israeli towns just outside the Mediterranean coastal strip.

The rocket attacks continued even during the Israeli offensive, however.

Tuesday night’s strike came as the United States and Britain have been discussing how and when to unveil a so-called road map laying out a proposal for the creation of an interim Palestinian state that would be linked to efforts by the government of incoming Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to rein in terrorist attacks.

At Shifa Hospital, one blood-splattered doctor looked up angrily from treating two small Palestinian boys, swathed in bloody bandages, who lay huddled together on a single bed because the cramped hospital ward had run out of space.

“Who are the terrorists here -- these children?” he demanded in furious tones before gesturing at journalists to move back.

Eyewitness accounts of the Israeli strike, which began about 8:20 p.m., were contradictory. Several witnesses said F-16 warplanes screamed overhead just before the initial explosion, but others insisted that the missiles were fired by helicopters.

Mohammed Hamdi Malakeh, 18, who lives near the site of the attack, said he heard “a very big boom” and ran to see what had happened.

“The car was burning, and there were a lot of people crowded around, and then we heard another huge explosion, and I found myself thrown on the ground, with burning in my face and my leg,” he said. Malakeh was treated for shrapnel wounds.

Israeli strikes at Hamas militants, particularly in the Gaza Strip, have sometimes been carried out with surgical efficiency -- and sometimes not.

Last July, Israel dropped a 1-ton bomb on the apartment house of Salah Shehada, leader of the military wing of Hamas, killing him along with 14 other people, nine of them children.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at first praised that operation, but Israeli officials later acknowledged that greater care should have been taken to avoid hurting and killing civilians.

Israel consistently faults Hamas fugitives for seeking shelter in densely packed civilian areas, a practice it says has led to many of the casualties that have occurred as its troops try to hunt down the militants.

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Special correspondent Fayed Abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.