Gaza City, June 22: Israel's killing of a West Bank chief of the radical Islamic movement Hamas "will not go unpunished", senior Hamas official Abdulaziz al-Rantissi said today. "Zionist terrorist operations will not go unpunished. It clearly shows that the Zionist enemy will continue to shed Palestinian blood," he said, adding, "Hamas will respond ton this new crime."
Abdullah Qawasmeh, considered the top Hamas official in the West Bank, was killed by an elite unit of Israel's borderguard which had come to arrest him in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli military sources said yesterday.

The armed militant, whose group has carried out the vast majority of suicide bombings in Israel, tried to flee and was shot in the ensuing melee, the sources said.

They said Qawasmeh was the mastermind for at least five attacks on Israel, including the June 11 suicide bombing of a bus in West Jerusalem that claimed 17 lives, plus the bomber.

Hamas sources requesting anonymity said Qawasmeh was a member of the group's military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades.
The killing comes at a sensitive moment for Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas who, in hopes of launching a US-backed peace plan, is negotiating with Hamas and other militant factions to convince them to stop their attacks on Israel.

Bureau Report