Israeli Missile Hits Home of Hamas Leader (Mahmoud al-Zahar) in Gaza

[Wonk]

(snip)

The house was hit in the air strike, which was carried out a day after back-to-back Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel killed 15 people.

http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3417764

[tinnypriv]

1. Clever

Not.

This guy is just a spokesman.

[Wonk]

2. Now it's being reported that he survived, but 3 neighbors died. nt

[Wonk]

3. Washington Post article with more details

Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A13

JERUSALEM, Sept. 10 -- An Israeli fighter jet dropped a bomb on the home of a senior Hamas leader in a residential area of Gaza City early today, killing his son and a bodyguard and injuring 30 people, Israeli military and Palestinian security officials said.

The target of the attack, Mahmoud Zahar, 58, a well-known political leader and co-founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement -- known by its Arabic acronym, Hamas -- was slightly injured when an Israeli F-16 dropped a 1,100-pound bomb on his house in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, according to witnesses and hospital officials. Zahar's wife was seriously wounded in the strike, they said.

Hamas, whose senior leaders have been the focus of an assassination campaign by the Israeli military since the group asserted responsibility for a suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem on Aug. 19 that killed 22 people, issued a statement saying that Israel had crossed "all red lines" by bombing a civilian's home. The statement, by the group's military wing, said that the "targeting of civilian homes is a violation of all red lines," and that blowing up Jewish houses and residential towers had become "an important and necessary matter, to punish an eye for an eye."

more...