Hamas Official Slain in Gaza; Rocket Reaches an Israeli City

Israel assassinated a local Hamas leader Thursday night, targeting him from the air as he rode on a donkey cart in the southern Gaza Strip. Four bystanders were hurt, one of them a small boy, Palestinian witnesses said.

It was the fourth Israeli airstrike in eight days aimed at Hamas leaders or operatives in Gaza. Israel has been using helicopter-fired missiles to strike Palestinian militants traveling in cars, and Hamas had urged its members to find other ways of getting around or stay put.

Earlier Thursday, Israeli armored vehicles staged a brief incursion into the northern Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants succeeded for the first time in hitting a large Israeli city -- albeit causing no injuries or damage -- with a rocket fired from the seaside territory.

The day’s events were a continuation of the violence that escalated after the Aug. 19 suicide bombing by Hamas of a Jerusalem city bus that killed 21 people, six of them children.

In the wake of the bus attack, Israel sent tanks and troops into several West Bank cities and embarked on a campaign of “targeted killings” of Hamas leaders and operatives.

The Israeli military confirmed late Thursday that it had killed Hamdi Kalakh, whom it identified as a 35-year-old member of Hamas’ military wing.

An army spokesman said that Kalakh had overseen the launching of rockets and mortar rounds at Israeli targets and that the militant was on his way to plant explosives near a Jewish settlement when he was killed.

Like other airstrikes aimed at Hamas, this one took place in a crowded street, this time in the town of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

“I saw him pass by on his cart, and suddenly I heard a helicopter and saw the missile hit,” said onlooker Jamal Awad, who was among those injured.

Hamas members in the Deir al Balah refugee camp, outside Khan Yunis, confirmed that Kalakh was a leader of the local branch of Izzidin al-Qassam, Hamas’ military wing.

Kalakh was the sixth Hamas member to be killed in a rapid-fire series of Israeli raids that began Aug. 21 with the killing of a senior Hamas leader, Ismail abu Shanab.

All the others since targeted in the wave of airstrikes were said to be members of a Hamas cell that manufactured and fired mortar rounds and Kassam-2 rockets like the one that struck the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon on Thursday.

The rocket crashed to the ground next to a brewery in an industrial zone on the edge of the city of 115,000 people, which lies six miles north of Gaza.

Earlier this week, Palestinian militants had fired a rocket that landed on a beach just south of Ashkelon, but this one landed inside city limits, marking the crude homemade projectiles’ deepest penetration into Israel.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose Negev ranch lies within the rockets’ apparent new range, announced that Israeli forces had been ordered to take “all necessary steps” to prevent such attacks in the future. Military spokesmen refused to say what those measures might include.

Even though rockets and mortar rounds fired from Gaza toward Jewish settlements inside the seaside strip and Israeli towns just outside it have caused almost no injuries or damage, the evident improvement in the militants’ rocket technology set off alarm bells in the Israeli defense establishment.

“Today was another escalation in the terrorist activity of the Hamas movement,” said Sharon, echoing comments by senior aides earlier in the day. The prime minister added that the rocket was thought to have been aimed at a “strategic target” -- a power station south of Ashkelon.

Although the Israeli incursion into northern Gaza lasted only a few hours, the venue dealt a symbolism-laden blow to the U.S.-backed peace initiative known as the “road map.” Armored vehicles moved to the outskirts of the agricultural village of Beit Hanoun, which this summer was the scene of the first Israeli troop pullback carried out under the peace plan.

That was the initial step in what was to have been a gradual Israeli withdrawal to positions held before the outbreak in September 2000 of the Palestinian rebellion known as the intifada.

Palestinian witnesses contacted by telephone said most people fled for shelter or cowered in their homes as Israeli armor pushed in just before 7 p.m. and moved to the village’s outskirts. While helicopters circled overhead, army bulldozers knocked down trees and plowed under crops and shrubbery before withdrawing.

Israeli security sources said the operation was meant to deprive cover to militants staging rocket and mortar attacks.

The Beit Hanoun area has long been used by Hamas as a launching pad for such attacks. The activity dropped off somewhat when Israel seized a swath of northern Gaza this year, but rocket and mortar fire still occurred sporadically during the Israeli clampdown.

Israel’s rapid response to the rocket firing illustrated the reluctance of Sharon’s government to let the security forces of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas try to deal with the militant groups on their own.

Before the Israelis moved in, Palestinian security gave chase to the militants who fired the rocket, a pursuit that included an exchange of fire, according to Palestinian witnesses.

Abbas is struggling with deepening unpopularity, based in large measure on the perception on the Palestinian street that he is all too willing to do the bidding of Israel and the United States. Israel, however, sees the Palestinian failure to crack down on militants as the primary cause of the current impasse.

The Palestinian Authority said Thursday that it had taken a significant step toward choking off the militant groups’ source of funds by freezing the bank accounts of nine Islamic charities operating in the Gaza Strip. The groups involved deny being conduits for money meant for the militants.

The freeze immediately drew protests from Gaza families who, as a result, did not receive monthly stipends.

Although its military wing is dedicated to Israel’s destruction, Hamas also operates a large social-services network in the Gaza Strip, which is a desperately poor area.