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Israel kills Hamas founder in Gaza air strike
SourceIsrael kills Hamas founder in Gaza air strike

Tuesday July 23, 2002

Israel kills Hamas founder in Gaza air strike
By Amos Harel, Ha'aretz Correspondent and Agencies

In what military sources called one of the most significant strikes since the start of the intifada 20 months ago, an Israeli warplane blew up a house in Gaza in the early hours of Tuesday morning, killing Salah Shehada, the head of the Hamas military wing in the Strip and the No. 1 man on the Israel Defense Force's wanted list in the last two years.

According to initial reports, a total of 10 Palestinians were killed in the strike, including Shehada's wife and three children. Dozens of people were wounded.

Israeli sources confirmed the airstrike in Gaza and the fact that Shehada had been killed. Eye-witnesses said an F-16 warplane fired a missile that levelled five houses in a Gaza City neighbourhood.

Officials at Gaza's Shifa Hospital said at least 10 Palestinians, including three children, were killed in the attack and dozens of people were wounded. Hamas leaders immediately vowed revenge.

Shehada, 40, was the commander of Izz a-Din el-Kassam, the military wing of Hamas, and served as a close personal aide to the movement's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In addition to his extensive involvement in terror activity, he had gradually developed his reputation as a leader with religious authority and was seen as a possible future heir to Yassin.

Shehada's involvement in Hamas stretched back to the beginning of the first intifada, which erupted at the end of 1987, and he spent time in Israeli jails.

Shin Bet officials say he orchestrated the attack on a pre-army training course in the settlement of Atzmona in which five students were killed, and the infiltration into the "Africa" outpost near Kibbutz Kerem-Shalom in which four IDF soldiers were killed. He was also involved in the production of the "Kassam" rockets which have been fired at Gaza settlements and into Israel.

Shehada cooperated closely with two other men high on Israel's wanted list in the Strip - Mohammed Deif and Adnan el Roul. In recent months the security establishment received information that Shehada was making contact with Hamas members in the West Bank, despite the physical separation between the two areas, and that movement members in Nablus were receiving orders from him.

According to Shin Bet officials, Shehada was one of the movement's most extreme members and rejected any talk of limiting suicide attacks. He was in contact with Hamas officials abroad. According to military sources, he challenged Yassin's leadership on several occasions, and was considered more radical than the movement's spiritual leader.

Israel tried to kill Shehada on several occasions but he always managed to escape. Aware that the IDF was hunting him, Shehada spent long periods underground.

When the IDF was considering a major operation in Gaza in May earlier this year, Shehada's capture or elimination was considered a major objective.

Israeli military sources estimated Tuesday that Hamas would make "every effort" to hit back as quickly and as hard as possible in an attempt to exact revenge for Shehada's assassination.

Hamas spokesman Ismail Haniyeh vowed that the movement would "take revenge for the martyrs. All the Palestinian people will unify to take revenge for the blood of the martyrs," he told reporters at Gaza's Shifa hospital, where the dead and wounded were taken.