Israel assassinated Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin outside a Gaza mosque yesterday, striking its heaviest blow against the militant group behind dozens of suicide bombings and drawing enraged vows of revenge.
Israeli security sources said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon personally ordered and monitored the helicopter attack against the paralysed cleric, whose wheelchair lay smashed in a pool of blood after three missiles exploded.
It was the highest-profile assassination of a Palestinian since the April 1988 killing in Tunis of Palestinian commando chief Khalil al-Wazir. At least seven other people died in the Gaza strike and two of Yassin's sons were among 15 wounded.
The attack on Yassin as he and his entourage left dawn prayers seemed to be aimed at weakening Hamas, a group seeking Israel's destruction, to prevent it from claiming victory should Sharon go ahead with a planned unilateral pullout from Gaza.
After the first missile hit, a witness told reporters: "I looked to see where Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was."
"He was lying on the ground and his wheelchair was destroyed. People there darted left and right. Then another two missiles landed," he said.
Another one of Yassin's sons, Mohammed, said he had remarked to his father about three hours before the attack about an Israeli reconnaissance plane spotted in the sky.
"He said, `We seek martyrdom ... to him [God] we belong and to him we return.'"
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, speaking to reporters, called Yassin "the Palestinian [Osama] bin Laden" and said his hands were covered in Israeli blood. Mofaz pledged more Israeli attacks on Hamas's top echelon.
But a dissenting voice in the Israeli cabinet, Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, said Yassin -- Hamas's spiritual leader -- was not "a ticking bomb" and voiced concern his death could lead to the loss of many more Israeli lives in suicide attacks.
Previous assassinations of militants have triggered waves of suicide bombings that have turned Israeli buses, restaurants and cafes into charred wrecks and deepened violence that has stalled a US-backed peace "road map."
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians poured out their grief in a funeral procession for Yassin and the other dead.
While espousing "armed struggle," Yassin's movement also ran a broad welfare network for Palestinians and he was seen by many in the West Bank and Gaza as a heroic symbol of resistance to Israeli occupation.
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