JERUSALEM, 2 September 2004 — Israel put the Hamas leadership back in the army sights while also threatening Syria over what officials said was complicity in the suicide bombings that killed 16 people in the first such attacks in the Jewish state in nearly six months.

Israel vowed a global pursuit of Hamas leaders and the accelerated construction of its West Bank barrier yesterday sparking the possibility of an intensified cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence that could further complicate Israel’s plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip by the end of next year.

Security officials said the Israeli military would answer Tuesday’s twin bus bombings with a renewed assassination campaign against leaders of Hamas, both in the Palestinian territories and abroad. “Whoever is responsible for using terror against us won’t sleep quietly,” Israeli Army chief Moshe Yaalon told a parliamentary committee.

As soldiers demolished the family home of one of the two Hamas bombers, a senior government source said its battle against the group would not be constrained by geographical borders. Plans to demolish the home of the second bomber were shelved for fear it could also wreck other families’ homes.

The source said Tuesday’s bombings in the southern desert city of Beersheva bore the fingerprints of Hamas’ Damascus-based leaders. “There will be a continuation of our targeted operations against the heads of Hamas,” the source said. “It’s Damascus that’s calling the shots; the orders are coming from there.”

Work on the barrier, which is eventually expected to stretch across the territory, has so far been concentrated in the north of the West Bank. “If there was a fence in that area it would have been much harder to get into Beersheva from Hebron,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s chief spokesman, Ranaan Gissin said “Now we will expedite and speed up the building of the fence there (in the south of the West Bank.”

Israel’s threats heightened regional tensions by raising the specter of another air raid like the one carried out deep inside Syria last October against a suspected Palestinian training camp.

— Additional input from Agencies.