Civilians killed in Israeli assassination of Hamas militant

At least five people were killed in an Israeli missile attack on Gaza City yesterday. The target of the attack was a senior figure in the Hamas militant movement, but two of the dead were thought to have been civilians.

Women and children were among almost 50 injured people who turned up at Gaza's al-Shifa hospital.

Eyewitnesses said the Israeli aircraft that attacked Saad al-Arabeed, an aide to the leader of Hamas's armed wing, fired a second time into a crowd of civilians who had rushed to the scene where Arabeed's wrecked Subaru car was still smouldering.

Doctors at al-Shifa said three of the dead came from the remains of the Subaru. They were identified as Hamas militants. But the other two were from among the crowd of civilians around the car, doctors said. Their mangled bodies had not been identified last night.

Arabeed was an aide to Israel's most wanted man, Mohammed Deif, the so-called Hamas chief bomb maker. Mr Deif is the military commander of the Izz al-Din al-Qassen Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, and is said to be responsible for the deaths of scores of people in suicide bombings and other militant attacks.

The Israeli army has attempted to assassinate him on more than one occasion, but has so far failed. Yesterday they assassinated one of his aides.

Arabeed was travelling in the Subaru with two other Hamas men, Ashraf al-Halabi and Omar Nasser, believed to be his bodyguards, through the Askoula neighbourhood in the south of Gaza City. The car was attacked near Imam al-Shafai mosque.

Ghalem Shehaiber, a 16-year-old with shrapnel in his back from the attack, told reporters in al-Shifa hospital how he was standing near by, at the Askoula circle, a landmark. "I heard two missiles fired. I rushed to the scene."

What Mr Shehaiber claims happened next is disturbing. A large crowd had gathered around the wrecked car. "After a short time, maybe two minutes, two more missiles were fired at the crowd." Mr Shehaiber and another witness, who declined to give his name, claimed that it was at this time that most of the wounded were hit.

The Israeli army has an openly stated policy of assassinating senior Palestinian militants, and it has repeatedly fired into crowded civilian areas during its assassinations. Last July, nine Palestinian children were killed when the Israeli air force dropped a one-tonne bomb into a packed area of slum housing in Gaza City in the middle of the night on a mission to assassinate Saleh Shehadeh, a leading Hamas militant.

The assassination of Arabeed is the first since the American and British armies invaded Iraq. It brought to an end three weeks of relative calm in the Gaza Strip. In the weeks leading up to the Iraq war, Israeli tanks were making almost daily incursions into the Gaza Strip.

Before the Iraq war began, there were widespread fears that the Israeli army would take advantage of a time when international attention was elsewhere and step up its campaign in the occupied territories.

But, apparently under pressure from the United States to keep the situation in the occupied territories calm for the duration of the Iraq war, it did the opposite and reined in activities. After yesterday's assassination, those original fears will be revived.

Last week more than 1,000 Palestinian men and boys were rounded up and trucked out of the Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank at gunpoint. The Isreali army said they were only forced out to allow soldiers to search their homes, and all the men and boys were allowed to return home after three days. But the experience unnerved many Palestinians.