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Israeli airstrike kills militant leader Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Israeli Airstrike Kills Militant Leader
Feb 7, 10:32 AM (ET)
By IBRAHIM BARZAK
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - An Israeli helicopter fired a missile into a car traveling in a crowded Gaza City street Saturday, killing a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group and a 12-year-old boy on his way to school. The attack wounded 10 Palestinians, three of them critically, in Israel's first targeted killing in six weeks, doctors said.
Also Saturday, a Palestinian military court charged four suspects with planting explosives along a main road in Gaza. A prosecutor said the defendants targeted Israeli tanks, but that one of their bombs may also have ripped apart a U.S. diplomatic vehicle and killed three American security guards Oct. 15.
The Palestinian killed in Saturday's air strike was identified as Aziz Mahmoud Shami, leader of Islamic Jihad's military wing in Gaza City. The Israeli military said Shami was in the midst of preparing for "a major attack" on the Gaza Strip settlement of Netzarim.
The army also said he was behind a 1995 double suicide bombing near the coastal city of Netanya that killed 21 Israelis and a more recent infiltration into a Gaza Strip military base in which three soldiers were killed.
Shami was driving in a white Peugeot in a busy Gaza City street when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile, ripping apart the front of the vehicle. Witnesses also heard the roar of F-16 fighter jets breaking the sound barrier over Gaza.
The attack also killed Tarek Sousi, who was on his way to school, doctors said.
Onlooker Mohammed Taleb, 36, said he was a few yards from the car when it exploded, and was knocked to the ground. After a moment he ran to the flaming car.
"The driver had lost his leg and he was lying half in and half out of the car bleeding heavily," Taleb said. "A small boy with his school bag was covered with blood and two other boys were screaming next to him."
Three of the 10 wounded were being operated on for shrapnel wounds to the chest and legs, doctors said.
Israel's military has routinely sent helicopters and F-16 jets to kill Palestinian militants in targeted missile attacks throughout more than three years of fighting.
Members of Islamic Jihad said Shami was the leader of the group's military wing in Gaza City and a cousin of the overall Islamic Jihad leader, Abdullah Shami.
Abdullah Shami said his group, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, would have its revenge.
"The Islamic Jihad movement is a resistance movement and it will respond to this aggression with all its force," Shami said, kissing his cousin's forehead at the morgue of Shifa Hospital in Gaza city.
Meanwhile, Palestinian authorities indicted four men for planting explosives on the main road in Gaza, leading from the Erez crossing to Gaza City.
U.S. officials have been pressing the Palestinians to find those responsible and have repeatedly said they are disappointed with the level of cooperation with Palestinian police. Recently U.S. officials have warned that some U.S. aid programs could be scaled back or canceled if there is no progress in the probe.
A military prosecutor said those bombs were intended to target Israeli tanks entering the Strip, but one of the explosives may have ripped apart a U.S. diplomatic car in the Oct. 15 attack on the convoy.
Palestinian and U.S. investigators found evidence indicating that the bomb was detonated by someone who intentionally targeted the U.S. convoy after watching it pass from a nearby hiding place. A wire found in the road after the blast was attached to a remote control device in a nearby shack.
The court set a Feb. 29 trial date for the four men.
Saturday's air strike came several days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would remove nearly all the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip as part of a "disengagement plan" from the Palestinians.
On Friday, Sharon's spokesman said Israel is considering relocating Gaza settlers in areas of the West Bank it wants to annex in a final peace deal. Palestinians denounced that plan as a land grab and a violation of international law.
As part of the disengagement plan, Israel would move soldiers and settlers out of some Palestinian areas and impose a boundary that would fall far short of turning over all the territory the Palestinians want for a future state.
The plan is to be completed within two or three months, Sharon spokesman Assaf Shariv said Friday.
Some 7,500 Jewish settlers live among 1.3 million Palestinians in the crowded Gaza Strip. Sharon's plan would leave at least three Gaza settlements in place, at least until a final peace deal.
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