Top Hamas Militant Leader Survives Israeli Attack

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Top Hamas Militant Leader Survives Israeli Attack

Palestinian eyewitnesses said on Tuesday that top Hamas militant leader Sheikh Salah Shehada who was targeted on Monday midnight by an Israeli F16 warplanes airstrike in Gaza City is not dead, and he was just moderately injured.

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An Israeli F-16 warplane blew up the house of a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip at midnight on Monday, killing 12 people and wounding 150 others. However, the target of the attack, the 50-year-old Hamas leader Sheikh Salah Shehada, survived the attack.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said early Tuesday that Shehada's wifeand two of his children were among the dead, but Shehada himself suffered only moderate injuries.

The air strike targeted a three-story building, which has two apartments on each story. Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Ranteesi confirmed that Shehada was not killed and that he is in stable condition.

About 100 Palestinians demonstrated at the place that was attacked, at Shiffa Hospital, in Gaza City and in the southern towns of Khan Younis and Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

They chanted slogans calling for immediate revenge. However, assoon as the news spread that Shehada was not killed, hundreds of Hamas supporters cheered and thanked God that Shehada is alive, but they called for revenge for the death of the 12 Palestinians.

In the town of Rafah, at least three Palestinians were wounded during exchanges of fire between Palestinian militants and Israelitroops stationed on the outskirts of the town.

Thousands of angry demonstrators took to the streets in Rafah and called upon all militants to unite and carry out "painful attacks" against Israel. Meanwhile, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) condemned the Israeli raid on a civilian building.

"Tonight's air strike is a continuation of the destructive war carried out by the terrorist Israeli occupation army that is usingthe most developed kinds of weapons against our innocent people," said a PNA statement issued after the attack.

The Israeli army also issued a statement confirming that Shehada was the target of the strike and said he was hit. It accused the Hamas leader of being behind "hundreds of terror attacks in the last two years against Israeli soldiers and civilians."

The air raid is likely to undermine the latest Israeli-Palestinian efforts to resume talks on easing Israeli restrictionson the Palestinians and starting security cooperation between the two sides.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Minister Without Portfolio Danny Naveh held a three-hour meeting on Saturday in TelAviv with a Palestinian delegation headed by a cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat. The meeting was also attended by the new Palestinian interior minister, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, who is responsible for security in the Palestinian territories.

Both sides described the meeting as "good and practical." Following the meeting, Peres said the Israeli army was prepared topull out of two West Bank towns, Bethlehem and Hebron, as long as the towns remained quiet and if the Palestinians assumed control of security there.

However, in the aftermath of the latest Israeli air strike, theAl Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of the Fatah movement chaired by PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat said in a statement that the group does notrecognize any deal with Israel and rejects any renewal of talks with Israel after the air strike.

"Our response to the Israeli crimes would be tough and violent,and our attacks would be resumed soon and would be against these criminal occupiers," the statement said.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians during the 22-month-old Israeli-Palestinian bloody conflicts.

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