GAZA (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Israeli assassins fired missiles from helicopter gunships on Wednesday at two cars carrying the military leaders of the Resistance Islamic group Hamas, killing one man but missing the bombing mastermind who tops Israel's assassins hit list. (Read photo caption below) Four missiles slammed into the cars as they drove through central Gaza, killing Bilal al-Ghoul and leaving the vehicles charred and smoldering wrecks. Pieces of metal from the vehicles hung in the branches of nearby trees.
``Our revenge to the assassination...will be thunderous and painful,'' Hamas supporters later shouted through loudspeakers, vowing to avenge the killing of Ghoul, the son of a top bomb maker who was in one of the cars but escaped unhurt.
Mohammed Deif, a founder of Hamas's Izz-el-Deen al-Qassam military wing who has topped Israel's assassins hit list for masterminding a deadly campaign of Resistance bombings, also escaped unharmed in the attack near the Bureij refugee camp.
Elsewhere, Israeli occupation soldiers shot dead a Palestinian policeman in southern Gaza and occupation troops killed four Palestinians near the West Bank city of Nablus in a raid the Israeli occupation army claimed was aimed at Resistance men planting a roadside bomb.
Palestinian officials said three of the men were unarmed civilians who tried to rescue a wounded Resistance man who later died.
In retaliatory Palestinian Resistance attacks Resistance men shot and wounded two Jewish settlers and at least 12 Palestinians were also hurt in confrontations which erupted in several familiar flashpoints from the south of the Gaza Strip to the north of the West Bank.
Israel has assassinated 60 activists since the revolt against occupation began last September. The policy has drawn widespread international criticism.
Deif has topped Israeli assassins' list since 1989 for masterminding the kidnapping and killing of Israeli occupation soldiers and Hamas's bombing campaign on buses in Jerusalem and a Tel Aviv shopping center in 1996 in which scores of Israeli occupiers were killed.
Then U.S. President Bill Clinton demanded that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat arrest Deif after the 1996 bombings.
Deif was reported to have been taken into Palestinian detention in May last year but was freed after the start of the uprising against Israeli occupation last September.Hamas has killed scores of Israeli occupiers in Resistance bombings since interim peace deals with Israel, which it rejects as being unfair and tilting heavily in favour of the occupying power, were signed in 1993.
``We are confident that Izz el-Deen al-Qassam will react at a suitable time and place,'' said Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar. He declined to say whether Deif had been in the car.
In other intifadha confrontations, Israel fired two surface-to-surface missiles at a police station in southern Gaza in what it said was a response to a mortar bomb attack nearby. Seven policemen and a civilian were hurt, Palestinian officials said.
ARAFAT CALLS FOR ARAB UNITY
Arafat told Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo to do more to confront Israeli policies of settlement and occupation which he said were the causes of nearly 11 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
``The bodies of international law are paralyzed in the face of flagrant Israeli aggression,'' he said.
But Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said during a visit to Poland that he still hoped to meet Arafat ``rather soon,'' possibly in Berlin, for talks on ending the bloodshed.
``Upon my return we shall fix a date,'' Peres told reporters in Warsaw, one day after he and Arafat said following separate meetings with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer that they were ready to meet for cease-fire talks.
Neither side has said it is optimistic that talks will end the violence in which almost 700 people, including about 530 Palestinians and some 150 Israelis, have been killed.
The Arab ministers were expected to express support for the Palestinians, but there was no sign that they would take actions to back up their words.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Israeli assassins fired missiles from helicopter gunships on Wednesday at a car carrying a Palestinian master bomb-maker, missing him but killing another intifadha activist, Palestinian witnesses said August 22, 2001. They said the bomb-maker, Mohammed Deif, escaped unhurt when four missiles slammed into his vehicle and another car in which several members of the Resistance Islamic group Hamas were driving near the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Palestinians watch as others attempt to extinguish the vehicle following the attack. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)