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Israeli troops kill four Palestinians in Gaza

The mother of Palestinian Tarek Sousi, 12, kisses her son's body during his funeral in Gaza City on Saturday. Sousi was killed on his way to school when an Israeli air strike blew apart a car carrying members of Islamic Jihad in Gaza City. PHOTO: AP

Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants and a 12-year-old boy in three separate incidents in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, prompting threats of revenge from Islamic Jihad.

On Saturday, an Israeli missile strike targeted the car of Aziz Shami, described by the Israeli army as an Islamic Jihad leader who was planning a major attack on the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the heart of Gaza.

Shami and a 12-year-old bystander were killed in the attack -- the first targeted killing in six weeks. Ten people were wounded.

Later Saturday, Israeli forces fired on two "suspicious" figures running toward a fence that separates between Jewish settlements and Palestinian areas of the Gaza Strip, the army said. One man, identified by Palestinian security forces as Islamic Jihad militant Hassan Rezka, 18, was killed. The second militant escaped.

Early yesterday, Israeli forces raided the Rafah refugee camp along the Egypt-Gaza border, seeking to arrest a fugitive, the army said. The fugitive tried to escape from a window in the building he was hiding in, and troops shot and killed him, the army added.

In a Gaza military court, prosecutors said four Palestinians indicted Saturday for planting explosives might have been involved in the bombing of a US diplomatic convoy Oct. 15, but stopped short of charging them in the attack.

The bombing, in which three US security guards were killed, further soured relations between the US and the Palestinian Authority, and US officials have complained that Palestinian police are not doing enough to find the attackers.

Shami was driving a white Peugeot down a busy Gaza City street when a pair of Israeli helicopters honed in on the vehicle. One of the gunships fired a missile that shredded the front of the car and spun it sideways. One of Shami's legs was severed and he hung out of the driver's side door.

Twelve-year-old Tarek Sousi was killed as he walked to school.

"A small boy with his school bag was covered with blood and two other boys were screaming next to him," said bystander Mohammed Taleb, 36, who was a few meters from the car when it exploded and burst into flames.

The boy's mother bowed over his body and kissed his forehead before burial.

The army said Shami had a hand in sending two suicide bombers to a bus stop outside a military base in 1995 in the coastal city of Netanya, killing 21 Israelis -- all but one of them soldiers. More recently, he orchestrated an infiltration into a Gaza Strip military base in which three soldiers were killed, the army said.

In the past three years of fighting, Israel's military has routinely sent helicopters and F-16 jets to kill Palestinian militants in targeted missile strikes.

Members of Islamic Jihad said Shami was the leader of the group's military wing in Gaza City, and served as a bodyguard of the overall Islamic Jihad leader Abdullah Shami, a cousin.

Abdullah Shami, who was not in the car, said his group, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, would have its revenge.

"The Islamic Jihad movement is a resistance movement and it will respond to this aggression with all its force," Shami said, kissing his cousin's forehead at the Shifa Hospital morgue in Gaza City.

In Beirut, the Al-Manar TV station, which is run by the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, released footage it said showed Aziz Shami training with other militants in the Gaza Strip in May.

Wearing a camouflage uniform and a ski mask over his face, the hulking Shami told the interviewer that the group is training to infiltrate Israeli settlements, repel military incursions and is recruiting new members from mosques.

"Even with our lack of resources and our simple equipment we can confront this enemy and tackle him," he said in the interview.

In Saturday's court case, Palestinian authorities -- under pressure from US officials to find those behind the US convoy bombing -- indicted four men for planting explosives on a main road in Gaza where the Oct. 15 blast took place.

US officials have recently warned that some US aid programs could be scaled back or canceled if there is no progress in the probe.
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