GAZA CITY, May 21: Israel threatened on Monday to hit Hamas political leaders unless rocket fire stops from the Gaza Strip, as four Palestinian militants were killed in a new air raid on the lawless territory.
In the latest Israeli strike, the four gunmen from the radical Islamic Jihad group were killed in a car in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, medics and the army said.
Israel will kill exiled Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal “at the first opportunity” and could also target prime minister Ismail Haniya, warned Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, a member of the powerful security cabinet.
Meshaal, who is based in Syria, survived a Mossad assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997. Haniya escaped an Israeli strike in Gaza in 2004 that killed Hamas's wheelchair-bound founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
“If Haniya is part of those who give the orders to carry out attacks, that will make him a legitimate target,” Dichter said.
In Damascus, a senior Hamas official shrugged off the warning against Meshaal. “We are used to these threats,” Mussa Abu Marzuk said. “It's an Israeli policy ... since 1948,” when the Jewish state was created.
In Gaza, a militant group loosely linked to President Mahmud Abbas's Fatah faction urged Palestinians abroad to “target Zionist interests to curb the Zionist aggression against our people.”
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said it was ready to form a battalion drawn from different Palestinian factions “to carry out attacks against Zionist political leaders and defend the leaders of our people.” But Palestinian information minister Mustafa Barghuti called for a comprehensive truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
ISRAELI WOMAN KILLED: An Israeli woman died of her wounds shortly after a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit her car in the southern border town of Sderot on Monday, medical sources said.
“A woman who had sustained critical wounds in a Qassam attack in Sderot died of her wounds shortly after arriving at the hospital” in the nearby town of Ashkelon, the sources said.
Another person who sustained moderate wounds in the attack that directly hit the vehicle the two were travelling in was treated at the scene.
Angered Sderot residents gathered around the burning remains of the vehicle, defying police calls to take shelter in case more rockets fell and calling on the government to take tough steps to counter the incessant attacks.
Palestinian militants fired a salvo of six rockets towards Israel on Monday evening and a total of 13 rockets during the day, police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said.
The attacks came as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was meeting European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Sderot to discuss the escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip.
Following their meeting, Livni blamed the Palestinian ruling Islamist movement Hamas, whose armed wing claimed responsibility for the latest rocket attack, for the renewed round of violence in the region.—AFP
