Hamas Weapons Expert Killed

An Israeli aircraft fired two missiles into a crowded Gaza City street Thursday night, killing a senior Hamas explosives expert who was blamed in the deaths of dozens of Israelis, according to both the military and the Palestinian militant group.

Adnan Gul, killed along with a Hamas colleague in the explosion, was the No. 2 man in the group’s military wing Izzidin al-Qassam, Hamas said in a statement.

Palestinian hospital officials said eight passersby were injured when shrapnel from the blast sprayed a street in the northeast Gaza City neighborhood of Mahata just before 9 p.m.

During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the nighttime streets are filled with people on their way to prayers or to iftar, the evening breaking of the fast.

A fugitive for many years, Gul had survived four previous Israeli assassination attempts that killed two of his sons, according to Hamas associates.

Gul, 45, was a protege of Yehiya Ayash, a notorious Hamas bomb maker known as “The Engineer” who was assassinated by Israel in 1996. Israeli military sources said that in the course of the current 4-year-old uprising, Gul was responsible for overseeing the production of Hamas weaponry in the Gaza Strip, including antitank mines and Kassam rockets.

The Kassams are crude weapons, difficult to aim with any degree of accuracy, but Hamas has been improving their range and precision.

After two Israeli preschoolers were killed late last month during an attack on the town of Sderot, the Israeli military launched a wide-ranging offensive in Gaza to root out the cells firing the rockets.

On Thursday, the streets of Gaza City echoed with calls for revenge broadcast from mosque loudspeakers.

An angry crowd gathered around the remnants of the blasted vehicle, a white Mitsubishi. Chanting marchers, some firing automatic rifles into the air, gathered at the morgue where the scorched corpses were taken.

The other man killed in the missile attack was identified by Hamas as Imad Abbas, also a member of the military wing.

Israeli military sources said Gul had joined the Palestinian Authority’s preventive security service before the current uprising and had used that as a cover for his Hamas activity.

Palestinian sources, however, said Gul had openly returned to his Hamas activities when the intifada erupted in late September 2000.

Hamas spokesman Muasher Masri denounced the killing as a “crime committed by the Zionist occupiers.”

Israel has systematically assassinated much of the Hamas leadership in Gaza, most notably Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the group’s spiritual leader who was slain in a missile attack in March, and his successor, Abdulaziz Rantisi, killed barely a month later in the same way.

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