An official in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fateh movement was shot dead Sunday by the Israeli army, sources on both sides said, in a killing the Palestinians angrily denounced as "military terrorism."
Thabet Thabet, a doctor who headed Fateh in the town of Tulkarem and was director general of the Palestinians' health ministry, was shot dead with five bullets to the chest at less than 300-meters (yards) range, sources close to Fateh said.
Israeli public radio said Israeli officials had confirmed their soldiers had killed Thabet.
The militant movement Palestinian Islamic Jihad pledged vengeance.
"These cowardly criminal operations ... will only boost our people's will to develop the Intifada. ... Jihad's response will soon be known," the group said in a statement.
Israel has killed several leaders of Palestinian factions over the past few weeks, as a Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, continues in the occupied territories.
"These Israeli crimes are proof of Israel's state terrorism," Palestinian cabinet secretary Ahmad Abdel Rahman said.
"The Palestinian Authority and Fateh promise the martyr Thabet they will continue the Intifada until Israel's policy of military terrorism is defeated," he told AFP.
Top Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rudeina said Israel was responsible for "political murders."
"We hold the Israeli government responsible for continued attacks and murders, which are going to bring catastrophic reactions ... and destroy efforts to save the peace process," he said.
Some 2,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Ramallah, where Fateh's West Bank leader Marwan Barghouthi told them that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was personally responsible for the killing.
"Through this action, he has opened the gates of hell," he said.
The killing of Thabet came the same day an extremist Jewish settler leader and his wife were shot dead in an ambush of their car in the West Bank -- TULKAREM, West Bank (AFP)
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