The Palestinian Resistance group Hamas said on Friday that it will target Israeli leaders in response to the Jewish state's tactic of killing senior Palestinian Resistance activists behind attacks on Israelis. Usama Hamdan, who heads Hamas in Lebanon, said Israel's killing in recent weeks of two senior Hamas figures -- one in an air strike that left 14 others dead -- meant Hamas's military actions should expand beyond bombings in public places.

"From here on out, targeting a leader, minister, or the head of the government of the Zionist entity will be treatment in kind, particularly since they are giving the orders (to kill Palestinians)," he told Reuters.

"The Palestinian response...will extend to the killers and it will extend to those who consent to being ruled by the killers."
Hamdan was voicing a harder line taken by Hamas recently against individual Israeli leaders.

A more senior Hamas figure said on Wednesday that the group, which has killed dozens of Israelis in Resistance bombings during the Palestinian uprising, should target Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to avenge a Hamas leader shot by an Israeli sniper in Gaza.

Hamas has carried out two attacks that have killed at least 16 people since Israel killed Hamas military commander Salah Shehada last month in an air strike on his home in a crowded Gaza City neighborhood.

"If the PA wants to confront the resistance it must confront the Palestinian people," Hamdan said.

BLOODSHED CONTINUES

In the West Bank on Friday, a 40-year-old Palestinian man was killed by Israeli occupation troops firing at curfew violators in the Tulkarem refugee camp, witnesses said. The occupation army said its soldiers were fired at by Palestinian Resistance men and returned fire.

In the nearby town of Qalqiliya, occupation troops arrested 22-year-old Ibrahim Dahmas, a senior activist in the Palestinian Resistance group Hamas accused of planning bomb attacks. Dahmas tried to escape when occupation soldiers found him at a house and occupation soldiers opened fire, injuring him in the shoulder, Palestinian security sources said.

In another incident, occupation troops found a belt rigged with crude explosives, the type that Resistance bombers commonly strap to their bodies.

Also Friday, Israeli occupation army sources said they had captured and were questioning two Lebanese men who had sneaked across the border into Israel. Security officials in Lebanon said goatherds had seen two masked men carrying suitcases penetrating a border fence and entering Israeli held territory.

PHOTO CAPTION

Masked Palestinian members of the Hamas military wing march during the funeral of their colleague, 27 year-old Hossam Hamdan, who was killed in the Khan Younis refugee camp, in the Gaza Strip August 8, 2002. Hossam's father, Ahmed Hamdan, who is one of the top political leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, accused an Israeli sniper of killing Hossam from a Jewish settlement near the refugee camp on Wednesday. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
- Aug 08 8:33 AM ET