Hamas vows to end truce at year-end
AFP
Date: 11-02-05
JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Hamas vowed to call off an informal truce at the year-end, as thousands rallied at the funerals of two Palestinian commando leaders killed in an Israeli air raid.
Bloodshed also gripped the northern West Bank where Israeli troops shot dead a member of the radical Palestinian group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades just hours after militants had killed an Israeli soldier in the same area.
"The quiet will finish at the end of this year," spokesman Mushir al-Masri told AFP at the funerals in Gaza's impoverished Jabaliya refugee camp.
He said militant groups which signed up to the informal truce in Cairo last March agreed at the time to review the situation ahead of 2006.
"No one should dream there will be another quiet," when faced with escalating violence from Israel, Masri warned.
Hamas, the most powerful Islamist movement in Gaza, warned Tuesday that Israel had "started a war" by killing a local leader of its military wing along with an Al-Aqsa commander.
Palestinian gunmen Wednesday shot dead an Israeli soldier near the West Bank town of Jenin in a shooting claimed by Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
Later, an Al-Aqsa gunman was shot dead during a gunbattle with Israeli troops in the nearby town of Qabatiya, Palestinian medics told AFP. Rafat Assus, 22, was critically wounded and died in hospital.
And an Israeli was lightly wounded when two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip onto the town of Netiv ha-Asara, on Israel's northern border with Gaza, the army said.
The latest bloodshed raised to 4,875 the number of people killed since the start of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000. Over three-quarters of the victims have been Palestinians.
Around 15,000 people attended the Gaza funerals amid shouts of "revenge, revenge" and "answer in Tel Aviv", all punctuated by burst of gunfire.
Hundreds of masked militants paraded mortar rounds, Kalashnikovs and grenades in the streets, as the victims' wives and children sobbed.
Qaraa is the first Hamas member to be killed since a flareup which kicked off last Wednesday following an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in northern Israel that killed five Israelis.
Until Tuesday's airstrike, Hamas had remained largely silent.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, however, promptly renounced the informal truce, in place since the beginning of the year. "To hell with the truce," it said, announcing a "mobilisation" of its supporters following the air strike.
Overnight, Gaza militants fired a Qassam rocket and a mortar into Israel, causing no injuries or damage.
Israel would only stop meting out "justice" when the Palestinians took on militants, a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Haaretz daily Wednesday.
"When there will be a let-up in terrorist attacks, when the Palestinian Authority decides finally to take action against these groups to disarm them... then we will not have to bring justice to them," Ranaan Gissin said.
Israeli sources said the two men killed Tuesday were responsible for a string of attacks which killed 20 Israelis, prompting the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily to laud the strike as "one of the more significant assassination operations in recent years".
Washington defended Israel's right to self-defence and called on the Palestinians to act against militants.
"We urge the Palestinian Authority to take action," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, saying the United States "understands Israel's right and need to defend itself".
Fourteen Palestinians and six Israelis have been killed in Middle East violence since the October 26 suicide bombing.
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