GAZA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Abu Shanab in a missile strike Thursday, two days after a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, and Islamic militant groups called off a seven-week-old old cease-fire.
The collapse of the truce, agreed by militant factions under international pressure, could sink a U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan aimed at defusing a 34-month-old uprising and creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza by 2005.
Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior figure in Hamas's political wing with a high media profile, was killed along with two bodyguards when four missiles fired by helicopter gunships shattered his car as it drove through Gaza City, witnesses and medics said.
Israel had hours earlier approved tougher military action against the militants following the suicide bombing that killed 20 people on a Jerusalem bus Tuesday, one of the bloodiest attacks in almost three years of conflict.
Hamas said it carried out the bus attack as retribution for the killing of members of the group, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, in Israeli army raids that have continued despite the truce.
Hamas swiftly vowed to avenge his death and another senior Hamas spokesman said the missile attack freed the group from its commitment to observing the unilateral truce with Israel.
"The assassination of Abu Shanab ... means that the Zionist enemy has assassinated the truce and the Hamas movement holds the Zionist enemy fully responsible for the consequences of its crime," Ismail al-Haniyah told reporters in Gaza.
-> hele artikel reuters.com
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Nu kunnen de gesprekken weer verder gaan!
toch best onvoorstelbaar dat Israel hiermee wegkomt als of er niets aan de hand is
Bladwijzers