In an interview with Albawaba.com Saturday, Hamas spokesman in Gaza Mahmoud Al Zahhar vowed revenge for the assassination of the Palestinian group’s military leader, Mahmoud Abu Hannoud.
Abu Hannoud was killed Friday by one of Israel's US-made Apache attack helicopters near his native village of Asira Shamaliyya, near Nablus.
In the interview, Zahhar revealed the details of the “cowardly assassination” after contradictory reports emerged late Friday.
According to the spokesman, Abu Hannoud was being accompanied by his escort, Ayman Hashaykeh, and the latter’s brother Mamoun, on his way to Asira from Nablus.
“Apparently, he was under surveillance, and those who were watching him must have reported to the helicopters which attacked the car.
“Abu Hannoud was able to abandon the car and head for the mountains. More than one helicopter opened fire on him, with direct hits that tore him to pieces,” said the spokesman.
Zahhar added that the victim's family was able to recognize him only after they saw bullet scars on his back, adding that the contradictory reports about his death were due to the fact that he left the car, while his two companions were killed afterwards.
The Hamas leader said that by the assassination of Abu Hannoud, Israel had checked off a list of top wanted Hamas military leaders, starting with Adel and Adnan Awadallah, Mohyeddin Al Asharif and Abu Hannoud.
There was only one exception to the success of the assassinations, he said - when the Israelis tried but failed to kill a Hamas leader in Gaza, Mohammad Dheif, three months ago.
Zahhar said he was certain that Hamas was able to produce generation after generation of leaders of its military wing, the Ezzeddin Al Qassam Brigades.
Israel blamed Abu Hannoud for the two most devastating suicide bombings of the 14-month-old Palestinian uprising, ignoring calls for an end to the "massacres" and facing threats of imminent revenge, said AFP.
A statement from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office Saturday said Abu Hannoud "was implicated in a long series of bombing attacks against Israeli citizens ... and in recent days was planning suicide attacks on Israeli territory."
It accused him of being responsible for two of the bloodiest recent attacks in Israel.
One was a June 1 suicide bombing Tel Aviv in which 21 people, mostly teenagers, were killed. The other, in Jerusalem on August 9, left 15 victims.
A Sharon spokesman said the killing of Abu Hannoud was "one of the biggest operational successes in the fight against terrorism being conducted by Israel.
"The Palestinian Authority could have arrested him but didn't do it. We eliminated him and saved many human lives," Avi Pazner told AFP.
And Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the assassination was "par excellence, an act of legitimate self-defense.
Israel has an avowed policy of targeting Palestinians it suspects of having carried out or of planning attacks on Israeli targets. Some 60 of them have been killed since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation in September 2000.
A Hamas political bureau member, Ismail Abu Shanab official, promised Saturday "hard and imminent" revenge.
And the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, said Israel would "pay the price for the crimes against our fighters.
"We swear by our martyrs that we will continue the jihad (holy war) and the resistance to defend our sacred values, our land and our people until liberation and until we have driven the enemy from our pure land."
Some 30,000 people gathered in the West Bank City of Jenin for Abu Hannoud's funeral Saturday, with many in the angry crowd shouting for revenge.
The assassination cast doubts over the prospects for success of two senior US envoys, who are preparing to travel to the Middle East in a bid to hammer out a new ceasefire.
The assassination was only one of several deadly incidents on Friday.
Two activists in Arafat's Fateh faction died in a Palestinian self-rule village in the West Bank in a still-unexplained explosion.
In the Gaza Strip, a 15-year-old Palestinian teenager was fatally shot and five other teenagers wounded by Israeli troops during clashes with stone-throwers and gunmen after the funerals of five schoolboys.
The children, all members of the same extended family and under the age of 14, were killed Thursday by what is thought to have been an Israeli booby-trap in the southern Gaza Strip.
And a man was mortally wounded and five other people injured when tanks opened fire on their car near the Rafah border terminal with Egypt.
An Israeli military source said the vehicle was travelling on a restricted military road, and that the soldiers had first fired warning shots.
The latest deaths brought to 989 the number of people killed since the outbreak of the uprising, including 778 Palestinians and 189 Israelis.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said "the Israeli government has crossed all red lines in intensifying its attacks" this week, with 12 Palestinians having died in the past two days.
He accused Israel of looking "to sabotage the United States efforts and to bring a blow against the mission of the US emissaries expected in the region in the next week."
He called for US President George W. Bush to "urgently act to stop the massacres committed by Israel."
On Saturday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib condemned Israel's policy of "assassinating and murdering innocent people."
He noted that the "Israeli escalation comes at the moment when international diplomatic efforts are being deployed to put an end to the violence and to get the peace process back on track," the official Petra news agency said.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns and retired Marine Corps general Anthony Zinni are to depart for the Middle East on Sunday to work toward a new ceasefire.
But both Peres and Pazner rejected suggestions that the envoys' work will be hindered by the assassination.
"This operation was not at all aimed at sabotaging the mission of the two US peace envoys as the Palestinians have accused," Pazher said. "On the contrary, we want to collaborate fully with them."
The spiralling violence broke a period of relative calm that followed US Secretary of State Colin Powell's announcement Monday of a revival of Washington's efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
