The Islamic Resistance Hamas movement vowed revenge after Israel assassinated Thursday evening a leader of its military wing in a missile assault on his car. "Hamas will not keep its arms crossed in the face of the assassination of one its members and the resistance will carry on until the liberation" of Palestine, a Hamas official told AFP.
The Hamas official confirmed the dead man was Baker Hamdan, a leader of Ezzedine al-Qassam, the armed wing of Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis.
Hamdan, 27, died when a missile struck his car. Israel believes Hamdan was behind the Hamas attack on the Israeli "Africa" outpost near Kibbutz Kerem Shalom on January 9, in which four Bedouin soldiers from the Desert Patrol Battalion were killed.
According to Haaretz, Hamdan was killed at around 9:30 P.M. According to Palestinian sources, Israeli Apache helicopters fired two missiles at the Subaru car in which Hamdan had been traveling, close to Nasser Hospital in the town. Hamdan was killed instantly. Two other persons sitting in the car, presumably Hamas activists, were seriously injured in the strike.
The day after the attack on the "Africa" outpost, Hamdan was detained by the Palestinian Authority's security forces. He was released a short while later.
The Israeli army spokesman confirmed that Israel had killed Hamdan. In a statement, the spokesman said that Hamdan had been the commander of Hamas's military wing in Khan Yunis and had been directly responsible for dozens of attacks carried out in the Gaza Strip in recent months. "Hamdan was killed while preparing to carry out a powerful terror strike in the Strip," the IDF spokesman said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
