Missiles kill two Hamas terrorists

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel killed a leading Hamas member and his assistant in a helicopter missile strike Saturday, the latest in a series of attacks.

Israeli troops also killed an 8-year-old girl and wounded seven other Palestinians with gun fire in the Gaza Strip's Khan Younis refugee camp, witnesses and hospital officials said. The girl, Aya Fayad, was shot in the chest by soldiers firing at the camp from a nearby military base.

Soldiers fired at an area where Palestinian activists were detonating roadside bombs on a patrol route, the army said. Terrorists in the same area later fired three mortar shells at a Jewish settlement, damaging a house but injuring no one, the army said.

The Palestinians asked the United States to intervene. The strikes, coupled with a Jerusalem bus bombing on Aug. 19 that killed 21, destroyed a cease-fire declared by terror groups on June 29 and have seriously jeopardized the peace plan toward Palestinian statehood.

In Saturday's attack, the Israeli helicopters fired four missiles at a pickup truck carrying the two Palestinian men, witnesses said. It was the fifth Israeli missile strike aimed at Hamas terrorists in 10 days.

The two were identified as Abdullah Akel, 37, and his assistant Farid Mayet, 40, both members of the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam.

Akel, a leading field commander in central Gaza, had fired mortar shells and homemade Qassam rockets at Israeli towns and Jewish settlements, and was preparing to fire more rockets when he was killed, the army said. Israel had jailed him for his membership in Hamas during the first Palestinian uprising, between 1987 and 1993.

Waving green Hamas banners and calling for revenge, some 5,000 Palestinians marched through the Nusseirat and Bureij refugee camps in a funeral procession for the two men.

Israel stepped up its campaign against terrorists after the Jerusalem bus bombing, for which Hamas claimed responsibility. Since then, Israel has killed 10 Hamas terrorists including the two on Saturday.

Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr said the missile strike was "part of the comprehensive war against the Palestinians" and blocked the resumption of peace negotiations.

"We hope that our friends, the Americans, will intervene in order to contain this deterioration of the situation," Amr said.

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