An Israeli air strike killed 11 civilians in an air strike that blew apart the top Palestinian militant it was targeting, wounded 140 more and put a damper on a round of promising diplomacy.
The Israeli jet strike on Gaza City killed the head of Hamas’s armed wing, Salah Shehade (50) and his bodyguard Zaher Nassar, Hamas officials said.
Moawi Abu Hassani, a doctor at Gaza hospital, said 11 civilians had been killed in the missile attack, including a two-month-old baby and five other children aged five or under.
The Hamas officials said there was nothing left of Shehade’s body, which was blown to pieces when the missile fired from an F-16 hit a cluster of apartment buildings in central Gaza City.
His wife and one of his daughters were also among the dead. The Israeli army confirmed that Shehade was the target of the raid, one of the deadliest Israeli strikes in the nearly 22-month-old Palestinian uprising.
”Shehade is among the dead victims,” said Ismail Haniye, a political leader of Hamas, ending a night of confusion about the fate of the militant.
Israeli state radio said the attack was personally ordered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer. Army radio said Sharon had congratulated the military on its success.
Palestinian sources said some 140 people were wounded in the attack that plunged Israel and the Palestinians into a new round of recriminations after a day of conciliatory gestures.
Palestinian leaders expressed outrage at what they called a ”war crime” and hundreds of angry Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip in protest. At least 10 were wounded in clashes with Israeli forces.
Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassine vowed reprisals. ”We can no longer respond with words to the butchery perpetrated by Israel last night,” Yassine told the Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera on Tuesday.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat denounced the raid as a ”despicable and cowardly act” just at a time when the two sides were beginning to rekindle a dialogue on humanitarian and security issues.
”We need to break this vicious cycle by giving efforts to put the peace process back on track the chance it deserves,” Erakat told CNN.
Gideon Meir, an Israeli representative, said the Jewish state was committed to the peace process but defended the operation to kill Shehade. ”In order for peace to prevail we must eradicate terrorism,” he said on CNN.
But he said later on army radio that Israel regretted the deaths of civilians, and Interior Minister Eli Yishai admitted that the method used, which also brought stiff criticism from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, could have been a ”mistake.”
Palestinian witnesses told AFP the F-16 swooped in just before midnight and fired one missile which destroyed or damaged five multi-storey buildings that were home to dozens of families, as well as a warehouse.
Rescuers had difficulty getting through the rubble to search for survivors as the neighbourhood, one of the most densely-populated in the world, was plunged into darkness. Frantic crowds carried bloodied victims away from the rubble and into ambulances.
Shehade, founder and head of the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades armed wing of Hamas, was one of Israel’s most wanted men. He had been held in an Israeli prison from 1984 to 1998.
An Israeli military source described him as a ”leading spirit behind the Hamas terrorist organisation” responsible for hundreds of attacks on Israelis.
”As far as we understand he (Shehade) was targeted and hit,” an army representative said.
Israel has carried out nearly 100 ”targeted killings” of Palestinian militants. On June 30 the army killed Mahannad Taher, leader of Ezzedin al-Qassam for the northern West Bank, in Nablus.
The strategy has come under fire from the international community and Annan deplored the latest attack.
”Israel has the legal and moral responsibility to take all measures to avoid the loss of innocent life. It clearly failed to do so in using a missile against an apartment building,” his representative, Fred Eckhard, said in a statement.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s top adviser, said the authority would appeal to the UN Security Council within 24 hours.
The air strike soured a day that had started out with a series of encouraging moves by both Palestinians and Israelis as a follow up to Saturday’s meeting of senior officials that discussed a wide range of humanitarian and security issues.
The Israeli army is still occupying seven major West Bank towns it invaded in mid-June as part of an operation to stamp out suicide bombings.
But both sides made tentative conciliatory gestures on Monday to meet Israeli calls for reform of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian demands for an easing of sanctions imposed by the Jewish state.
Palestinian police arrested the head of the PA’s customs and tax department, Nasser Tahbub, on charges of corruption, Palestinian security officials said.
Tahbub was arrested in his finance ministry office in the West Bank town of Ramallah as part of the PA’s promised crackdown on corruption, urged by the United States and Israel as well as the Palestinian public.
The arrest came as Israel mulled releasing part of the $430-million in Palestinian customs duties and taxes it has kept since the start of the conflict.
Palestinian and Israeli officials said the two sides were also discussing a new Palestinian security initiative that could lead to a staged Israeli withdrawal from re-occupied zones.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres later said Israel was ready to withdraw its forces from relatively quiet areas of the West Bank such as Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho, the Israeli news agency Itim said. No date was given for a start of the Israeli withdrawal.
Israel also reopened the administrative offices of moderate rector Sari Nusseibeh at Al Quds University in occupied east Jerusalem, reversing a July 9 closedown order that had triggered international criticism.
Israeli officials said Nusseibeh gave a written undertaking to have no contact with the Palestinian Authority, and in particular not to receive any money from it.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice held talks with two envoys from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, US officials said.
They said Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, and the prime minister’s former aide de camp, Moshe Kaplinsky, discussed a US proposal to overhaul the Palestinian security apparatus and also went over humanitarian issues. – Sapa-AFP