Israelis kill Hamas leader

A US peace mission to the Middle East today was thrown into disarray yesterday after Israel assassinated the most senior Hamas militant on its most wanted list.

Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, the head of Hamas's military wing, was killed along with his deputy, Ayman Hashaikah, and a third man when Israeli helicopters fired missiles at their van, near Nablus in the West Bank.

The condition of his charred remains delayed an identification for several hours, but Hamas acknowledged his death last night.

It called for three days of mourning and a national strike, and a senior Hamas leader vowed a "painful response" to the killing.

In May this year, Israeli F-16 warplanes dropped one-tonne bombs on a Nablus police station, killing at least 10 Palestinians, in a failed bid to assassinate Hanoud.

In the Gaza strip, troops shot at a taxi last night, killing the Palestinian driver and injuring three passengers returning from a party. The army said the car had driven at a checkpoint and had ignored warning shots to stop.

It was the second shooting of unarmed Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza within a matter of hours. Earlier, soldiers fired on protesters leaving the funeral of five boys who were blown to pieces on a Gaza sand dune early on Thursday morning by an explosive device apparently planted by the Israeli army. A 15-year-old was killed.

The killings brought a definitive end to nearly two weeks of relative calm and could wreck any chance of President George Bush's envoys imposing a ceasefire after 14 months of bloody conflict.

With at least 10 people killed in the West Bank and Gaza in the last 48 hours, Palestinian officials accused the Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon, of deliberately escalating tensions.

"I think he wants to make the American effort fail, and it is an attempt to push the Palestinians to react," said Ahmed Abdel Rahman, the Palestinian cabinet secretary.

Even before last night, there was growing anger among Palestinians - and disquiet among Israelis - over the deaths of the five boys, two sets of brothers and a cousin from the same clan in the town of Khan Yunis.

They were killed as they made their way to school along a sand dune near the illegal Jewish settlement of Gush Katif.

The cinderblock walls at the crest of the dune have been used by Palestinian militants shooting at the settlements, and Israeli newspapers yesterday gave detailed accounts of how the army had invaded the area, which is supposed to be under Palestinian control, to plant a device.

Senior military sources yesterday admitted that soldiers had probably planted the explosive device, provoking an angry debate.

"Until now they have spoken about targeted hits," said the leftwing opposition leader, Yossi Sarid, referring to Israel's strategy of assassinating activists. "Yesterday was absolutely not a targeted killing... It's a residential area."

A senior army official told Israel Radio the killing of the five boys was a "grave operational mishap".

The Palestinian security chief, General Abdel Razak Majaidah, called for an international investigation of "the murder of innocent children".

He said the explosion that killed the five boys was too powerful and the shrapnel of the wrong type to have come from an unexploded tank shell, as previously thought.

He said it appeared to confirm the allegation that Israeli forces planted an explosive device in the dunes, intended for the gunmen. "We had information from witnesses that they had seen an Israeli army bulldozer working near that area the day before," he said.

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