Six members of Hamas' armed wing were killed when an explosion ripped through a house in Gaza, a blast which a leading Hamas official blamed on Israel.
The six were identified by Hamas leader Ismail Haniya as Mohammed Selmi, Mofid el-Ghol, Akram Nassar, Nidal Farhat, Iyad Shaladan and Ayman Mohanna.
Several other people were wounded in the explosion in the house in the El Zeitoun neighbourhood in the eastern part of Gaza City, medics said.
Hamas leader Abdelaziz al-Rantissi said Israel was behind the "assassination" of the activists. "This is a terrorist operation, 100 percent a Zionist assassination," he told AFP. "The Zionist occupier will pay a heavy price for this."
Meanwhile, three Palestinians were killed and at least 30 others were wounded, in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops Sunday afternoon in the West Bank city of Nablus. An Israeli officer was also reported injured.
The heavy gunfire took place as occupation forces surrounded a multi-storey building in central Nablus, and arrested a senior activist of Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Taysir Khaled and three other Palestinians.
Samir Ghoshe, a PLO executive committee member in charge of the Jerusalem dossier, said that Khaled was the second PLO committee member arrested after Abdul Rahim Mallouh, deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who was grabbed last June.
Ghoshe said that the arrests were a flagrant violation of the 1993 Oslo peace accords signed between Israel and the PLO and which guaranteed executive committee members freedom of movement when they returned to the territories.
He accused Israel of wanting to break up the traditional leadership of the PLO, which groups 12 mainstream factions but not Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and which represents Palestinians living both in the territories and as refugees in the Arab world.
He added the move was an Israeli bid to create a separate Palestinian leadership in the territories which was not linked to the volatile refugee issue.
Earlier in the day, Israeli soldiers arrested Salah Al-Aryah, a leading Tanzim member early Sunday morning in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
