Israeli security sources confirmed on Sunday that Tel Aviv was behind a car bombing in Damascus that killed a senior Hamas official.
Earlier, the Palestinian Resistance Movement confirmed the death of Ezzeddin Subhi Sheikh Khalil.
It vowed to strike back with attacks inside Israel. "There will be a response that would be decided by the movement's leaders inside the occupied territories," a Hamas spokesman in Damascus said. Later, the Movement asserted that "such crimes that united Palestinian blood within and outside the occupied homeland would not terrorize Hamas and would not weaken its insistence on continuing along the road of Jihad and resistance."
"Israeli authorities have taken a dangerous step this morning by the assassination of Palestinian citizen Ezzeddin Sheikh Khalil...", an official source told SANA.
The source added that this "terrorist" operation constitutes a dangerous development that Israel is the responsible for. "Israel asserts its intentions to destabilize the region at a time when regional and international efforts are being exerted to ease the tension in the region,". a Syrian official said.
The explosion took place in the Al Zahera neighborhood in Damascus, a Hamas spokesman confirmed. An official source at the Syrian Ministry of Interior told SANA that three other people who happened to be at the scene of explosion, were wounded. The source added that Khalil didn’t practice "any activity inside the Syrian territories." The Syrian authorities concerned are following up their investigations into the accident, the source conveyed.
"Some people lead dangerous lives," an Israeli official said in response to the assassination of Khalil. It should be noted that in recent weeks, Israel threatened to target the Hamas leadership outside Palestine.
Khalil was deported by Israel in late 1992 to Marj a-Zuhur in Lebanon, and later refused to return. He was born in Gaza in 1962. Khalil was a graduate of Islamic jurisprudence.
In the Shajaiyeh neighborhood in Gaza, people converged on the Khalil family home to offer their condolences. Khalil's brother, Rafik Khalil, blamed Israel and called his brother a "martyr." "Since he left the country, we have had no contact with him because he chose to live a secret life," Khalil said, according to The AP. (Albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
