6 Killed in Gaza Strip Blast

Six members of the military wing of Hamas were killed Sunday in a mysterious explosion in the Gaza Strip, one day after the militant Islamic group blew up an Israeli battle tank a few miles away, incinerating its four-man crew.

Sunday’s deaths -- which had all the hallmarks of the relentless eye-for-an-eye retribution that so often characterizes the conflict in this region -- came on a day that also saw three Palestinians killed and two dozen injured in the West Bank as Israeli troops stormed an office compound in the city of Nablus to arrest a high-ranking Palestinian militant leader.

Later, Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopters stormed a neighborhood north of Gaza City in an overnight raid that left at least two Palestinians dead and several wounded, according to witnesses and hospital officials. The troops blew up the home of a Hamas leader before withdrawing early today.

Among the wounded in the raid was an ambulance attendant trying to help the injured, Palestinians said.

Hamas blamed Israel for the explosion that rocked a ramshackle farm compound Sunday in the Gaza City enclave of Zaitoun, a Hamas stronghold. Last month, Israeli troops and tanks shot their way into the neighborhood to blow up what the army said were munitions workshops. That raid left a dozen Palestinians dead.

Israel refused to comment on Sunday’s blast, but Palestinian witnesses said several Israeli aircraft, including what was believed to be a pilotless plane, were seen in the area.

Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, vowed that it would exact vengeance.

“Israel will pay the price for this, and it will be a very, very high one,” said Abdulaziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader in Gaza.

The group acknowledged that all of the dead men, together with three others who were injured, were members of its military wing, Izzidin al-Qassam, which has carried out hundreds of attacks against Israelis during the last 2 1/2 years.

Hours before the explosion, Israel said Hamas would suffer the consequences for laying a powerful bomb in the path of an Israeli tank that was making its regular rounds outside a Jewish settlement in the northern Gaza Strip.

“We will strike hard at our enemy, Hamas,” said Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who on Sunday toured the narrow strip of no man’s land outside the settlement, where the U.S.-made M-60 tank was destroyed a day earlier by a 220-pound bomb buried in the sandy soil.

Throughout the 29-month-long Palestinian uprising, Israel has carried out “targeted killings” of Palestinian militants it holds responsible for attacks against Israelis, including shootings and suicide bombings. Occasionally, Israel acknowledges responsibility for such operations, particularly when a high-ranking militant leader is slain, but more often it keeps silent.

The source of Sunday’s explosion appeared to have been a car parked in the farm compound, and Palestinian witnesses said at least one other large blast followed. The vehicle’s frame was left bent and scorched, and pools of blood could be seen nearby.

Initially, it was thought that the explosion could have been a “work accident” -- the term both sides use to describe a premature blast as Palestinian militants are priming a bomb. But Hamas, which sometimes admits the truth when its men blow themselves up by mistake, said Israel was responsible this time.

“They are employing new technology against us,” Hamas spokesman Ismail Haniya said without elaborating. In the past, Israel has successfully booby-trapped phone booths, cellular telephones and cars to carry out killings of Palestinian militants -- a practice that is denounced by rights groups as amounting to execution without trial.

In Nablus, meanwhile, a chaotic clash broke out between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen and stone-throwers when Israeli troops closed in on a downtown office building to arrest Tayseer Khaled, a senior member of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.

Hospital officials said three Palestinian men were killed and two dozen were wounded by gunfire.