A senior official of Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, promised Saturday "hard and imminent" revenge for the assassination a day earlier of Mahmoud Abu Hannoud, one of the group's top military leaders.
"What happened is a dangerous escalation," said Hamas political bureau member Ismail Abu Shanab, quoted by AFP.
"The response will be hard and imminent."
Abu Hannoud and two other men were killed Friday when their car was rocketed by Israel's US-made helicopter gunships in the West Bank.
The agency also reported that Israel endorsed the assassination Saturday.
"During an operation launched by security forces Friday evening in the sector of Nablus, Mahmud Abu Hannoud, born in 1967, one of the military chiefs of Hamas sought (by Israel) was killed," the statement 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."
In particular, it said he was responsible for two of the bloodiest recent attacks in Israel.
The statement added that Maamun Hashaike and his brother, Ayman, were also killed in the attack, and that Ayman was one of Abu Hannoud's "closest collaborators."
CNN said that Ayman was the No. 2 in the military wing of Hamas in the West Bank.
The three were killed when Israeli helicopter gunships fired rockets at their car near the northern West Bank village of Yasid.
A Palestinian security source told CNN that Israeli tanks were firing around the car for 15 minutes after the missile attack, preventing ambulances from approaching the scene.
Some 60 Palestinian activists and political leaders have been assassinated by the Israeli forces since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against 34 years of Israeli occupation.
In all, Israelis killed at least seven Palestinians Friday, including a teenager, who was shot in the head in the wake of a funeral for five boys blown apart by an Israeli booby-trap a day earlier.
Wael Ali Radwan, 15, died after being hit in the head by an Israeli bullet around the Khan Yunis cemetery close to the settlement of Neve Dekalim in the southern Gaza Strip.
Near the West Bank town of Nablus, meanwhile, AP reported that two Palestinians were killed when a bomb they were trying to plant near a road used by Israeli motorists blew up prematurely.
An Israeli booby-trap bomb was responsible for the deaths of the five Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, the daily Maariv reported Friday.
Quoting military sources, the Israeli paper said the bomb was placed a week ago by special forces.
According to the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz newspaper, "a landmine or another explosive device" planted by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip likely caused the death of the Palestinian boys early Thursday morning
The army spokesman refused to respond to the matter Thursday night when contacted by the paper.
Over 700 Palestinians and more than 180 Israelis have been killed in the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of military occupation, according to news agencies.
SHARON SAID TO BE SABOTAGING US PEACE EFFORTS
The Palestinian Authority said that Israel, by killing more than 10 Palestinians in two days, has “crossed all the red lines.”
Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman said the killing of the Hamas activists, just a day after the deaths of the Gaza schoolchildren, suggested a deliberate attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to undermine a new American attempt to calm the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said AP.
“I think he wants to make the American effort fail and it is an attempt to push the Palestinians to react,” the agency quoted him as saying.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday delivered a major address in which he condemned Israel's policy of settling conquered Palestinian land as "crippling" to peace efforts, and vowed to send mediators into the region. Sharon, however, has repeatedly made clear his unswerving support for the settlements.
According to the UK-based magazine The Economist, Israel has "flouted" the 1993 Oslo peace accords by moving tens of thousands of "settlers" onto land seized from Palestinian owners after the Arab-Israeli 1967 war.
As a sign of renewed US engagement in the Mideast, two US mediators, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, are to arrive in the region next week.
They are to press the two sides to implement accords already agreed on - a truce negotiated last May by CIA Director George Tenet, and the April report of an international commission headed by former US senator George Mitchell with a formula for restarting peace talks.
The report also calls for an end to Israeli settlement activity, a factor which could trip up the peace process.
Zinni, appointed special adviser to Powell, is according to AP expected to remain in the area to "shepherd" the negotiations.
Sharon, who took office promising to ensure the personal safety of ordinary Palestinians within a short period of time, recently told his Likud Party inner circle to prepare for a long struggle.
JORDAN CONDEMNS ASSASSINATION POLICY
Jordan condemned Saturday Israel's policy of "assassinating and murdering innocent people," just at a time when US-led efforts to revive peace talks are gearing up, according to AFP.
Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Kkatib, quoted by the official Petra news agency, was reacting to the deaths of 12 Palestinians over the past two days.
He characterized as a "crimes of murder" the deaths of the five Palestinian boys, all from the same extended family.
The boys were killed by an Israeli booby-trap, according to news reports.
"Jordan equally condemns Israel's excessive recourse to force, the aggression the Palestinian suffered on Friday and (Israel's) pursuit of its policy of assassination and the murder of innocents."
UN WARNS ISRAEL ON REPORTED TORTURE OF PALESTINIANS
The United Nations Committee Against Torture has warned Israel that it has several concerns about the interrogation methods used by the Israeli security agency against Palestinian detainees, according to the BBC.
In its concluding report on Israel, the committee also said it was unhappy with reports of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian minors, said the news service.
The committee, which is made up of 10 independent experts, said it was worried about methods allegedly used by the Israeli security forces which include sleep-deprivation and the use of incommunicado detention for both Palestinian adults and children, according to the report.
Experts also noted that there had been very few prosecutions of alleged torturers and that there were several reported cases of "extra-judicial killings."
News agencies have reported that Israel has killed over 50 Palestinians in assassinations variously referred to by the government as "targeted killings," "interception" and other euphemisms.
Israel's ambassador, Yaakov Levy, who has been defending his country's record, maintained that Israel's security forces did not use interrogation methods which amounted to torture and he added that Israel was being forced to fight "terrorism" with its "hands tied behind its back," said the BBC.
The committee said that "no exceptional circumstances" justified torture, and according to the BBC recommended that the Israeli government take all necessary steps to prevent such abuses and "to institute effective complaint and investigative mechanisms."
The Palestinian Authority has also faced numerous accusations, lodged in the press and in human rights reports, that it has tortured detainees - Albawaba.com
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