MO: GAZA, ALMENO DIECI MORTI IN RAID ISRAELIANO

2002-07-23 00:11:00
MO: GAZA, ALMENO DIECI MORTI IN RAID ISRAELIANO

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.

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.

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.

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.