Gaza City

Three suspected members of the radical Hamas group were killed in Gaza City when an Israeli attack helicopter fired missiles at a car containing the group. Ten people were reported wounded in the attack, which destroyed the vehicle as it was travelling in the northern part of Gaza City.

Four people were killed and a fifth wounded on Wednesday in a roadside bomb explosion that hit a convoy of United States diplomatic vehicles in the northern Gaza Strip. The blast, which has been condemned by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, is the first attack of its kind in the Palestinian territories against a US target.

Six Palestinians were killed in a massive Israeli raid in southern Gaza, hospital sources said on Friday, as question marks still hung over the future of Palestinian premier Ahmed Qorei amid reports he wants to quit.

A top leader of the radical Islamic Hamas movement on Tuesday accused the newly sworn-in emergency Palestinian Cabinet of aiming to ”wage war” against the Palestinian resistance. The nine-member emergency Cabinet headed by Ahmed Qorei took office after being sworn in by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Israel struck back with helicopter attacks in the Gaza Strip overnight after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 19 people, including five children, in the northern Israeli town of Haifa. The radical Palestinian movement Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the suicide attack on the eve of the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday.

Senior Palestinians told Israel on Monday that its threat to assassinate Yasser Arafat was a serious mistake after Washington also warned against any move to ”remove” the veteran leader, denouncing the threats as ”criminal, insolent and stupid”.

Hamas on Wednesday threatened to widen its bombing campaign and target homes and high-rises in Israel, in retaliation for an air strike that flattened the house of a Hamas leader and killed his eldest son and a bodyguard.

Israeli warplanes have bombed the home of a senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, wounding him and killing three of his family members, witnesses and hospital officials said. In all, about 20 people were hurt.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas on Thursday officially declared its ceasefire finished after an Israeli air strike killed one of its top leaders.

Palestinians expressed anger on Wednesday over the death of Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, accusing the United States of dispensing the same kind of summary justice as meted out by the Israeli army.

Israel declared total war on Hamas yesterday, with the Islamic resistance movement responding by ordering all its fighters to immediately mobilise and ”blow up the Zionist entity”.

Tuesday’s attempted assassination of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi has placed the curent US-led peace efforts in the Middle East in dire jeopardy, with US President George Bush being ”deeply troubled’ by the attack.

At least seven Palestinians were killed and more than 20 wounded late on Tuesday as Israeli F16 fighters and Apache helicopters attacked a residential area in Gaza City, Palestinian medical sources told AFP.

A total of 10 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops early on Wednesday during a major incursion into the eastern part of Gaza City, while an 11th blew himself up, hospital sources said.

Israeli assault helicopters fired missiles at a Palestinian police station and a factory in the south of the Gaza Strip overnight, following another day of deadly violence.

A senior Hamas political official in Gaza said on Friday the radical Islamic group was ”sorry about the death of Americans or foreigners” in Wednesday’s Jerusalem bombing at Hebrew University.

Israeli tanks and troops launched a major overnight raid into the Gaza Strip as Jewish New Year celebrations began with security forces on maximum alert amid fears of a Palestinian bomb attack.

ISRAELI troops killed four Palestinian gunmen infiltrating Israel from the Gaza Strip on Monday, as the army arrested at least 12 Palestinians in a new wave of security sweeps through the West Bank.

A Palestinian human rights group on Saturday slammed as a ”joke” an internal Israeli army inquiry which absolved the military of blame in the killings of 12 Palestinian civilians in the past two weeks.

Two Palestinian Islamic groups on Thursday lambasted Israel for its overnight tank shelling in the Gaza Strip that killed four members of the same Palestinian family, with one group vowing bloody
revenge.