Senior Hamas leader survives attack as Israel hits back

Military aircraft attacked the home of a senior Hamas leader in Gaza yesterday in response to the two suicide bombs on Tuesday that killed 15 people and wounded dozens.

Mahmoud Zahar survived the air attack, one of a series of operations launched since the bombings, but his son and a bodyguard were killed, prompting fresh calls for vengeance against the homes of Israelis from faction leaders.

Troops in armoured vehicles had earlier moved into the West Bank village of Rantis, close to the busy bus and hitch-hiking stop where eight people, mainly soldiers on their way home on leave, were killed on Tuesday and from which the two suicide bombers came.

The army imposed a curfew as it detained students and family members of the two dead perpetrators, Ihab Abdul Qadr, 19 - who was responsible for the bus stop bomb - and Ramez Fahmi, 23, who killed seven Israelis in the attack at the Café Hillel in Jerusalem's German Colony. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, decided to cut short his trip to India and was expected to return to Israel today.

He will consider what military action to authorise in reaction to the carnage on Tuesday. While officials acknowledged that a ground invasion of Gaza was an option to be discussed, they have also indicated that this might be delayed to allow Ahmed Qureia, who formally accepted the post of Palestinian Prime Minister yesterday, a brief period in which to take action against militant factions.

Mr Qureia accepted the post without securing the guarantees he had sought from the Israelis, including an end to assassinations. He was said to have done so because of the mounting security crisis. Israeli ministers are also likely to consider the option, controversial even in the Israeli government, of expelling Yasser Arafat, or more likely in the short term, cutting off his freedom further by blockading the Maqata compound where he is holed up and cutting off its communications with the outside world.

There is little sign that most Israeli public opinion shares international concern at the assassination policy directed at militant factions. A poll published by Ha'aretz newspaper yesterday and taken well before Tuesday's bombings showed that 59 per cent of electors thought that the failed attack on the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was "justified and Israel should try again".

Only 9 per cent thought that it was a mistake, while 28 per cent - in contradiction to American government policy - thought that Yasser Arafat should be expelled. Eighteen per cent thought he should be assassinated. Another 27 per cent believed that his isolation in the Maqata compound should be increased.

Relatives of one of the bombers, Ihab Abdul Qadri, proclaimed that he was a martyr. His mother, Itaf Mirshed, 46, said yesterday that her son had called her on Monday at the charity office in Ramallah where she works, asking her to return home on the pretext that the family should see his aunt for the last time before she travelled abroad.

Saying that she had no idea what he was planning, Mrs Mirshed added that if she had gone home, "I would have told him not to do it, I would have made him change his mind". Speaking in the family's bare and crumbling house in Rantis, which directly overlooks the Israeli settlement of Ofarim, she said that her son had been detained for three months earlier in the year as a suspected Hamas member.

In Ramallah, the Israeli army arrested two Hamas operatives in a raid in which witnesses said there had been shooting - with one man being injured - after youths threw stones at its vehicles. Gates to the Maqata compound were locked by Palestinian Authority guards in preparation for any military action by the Israel.