GAZA, 13 June 2003 — An Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip yesterday killed seven people, including a senior Hamas fighter, his wife and three-year-old daughter. The helicopter attack was launched one day after a Palestinian bombing killed 16 people on a Jerusalem bus and Israeli air raids killed 11 in the Gaza Strip in one of the bloodiest days in months of violence.
An Israeli security source said the missile strike followed a Defense Ministry order for the army “to use everything they have” against Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the bus bombing and vowed further attacks.
Helicopters fired six missiles into Gaza City, reducing a Subaru car to charred metal and injuring more than 40 bystanders, witnesses said.
Palestinian sources identified the Hamas fighter as Yasser Taha, a senior member of the military wing of the group wanted by Israel. The sources said his wife and three-year-old daughter also died in the strike.
A baby bottle and child’s shoes were pulled from the car’s wreckage and people filled the streets shouting for revenge.
“These are killers of children, women, innocent people... Let us wait and see who is going to destroy the other,” said senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar.
Near the northern West Bank town of Jenin, an Israeli driver was killed late at night by shots fired by suspected Palestinian militants, witnesses said. They said the shooting took place near the area of Yabed.
An Israeli military source would only confirm that an Israeli was shot dead in the West Bank.
In an anonymous telephone call to AFP, the attack was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a radical offshoot of Fatah.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed at a Cabinet meeting to press ahead with attacks against Hamas. “This targeted killing is just the beginning,” the Israeli security source said.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat called on members of the Quartet behind the road map to peace — the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — to intervene.
“We are in need of strong pressure to stop this aggression against our people,” Arafat said.
But the White House, while rebuking Israel on Wednesday for trying to assassinate a Hamas leader, yesterday put the blame for the violence squarely on the Palestinians.
“The issue is not Israel, the issue is not the Palestinian Authority, the issue is the terrorists who are killing in an attempt to stop the (peace) process,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
“The issue is Hamas, the terrorists are Hamas,” he said.
Hamas earlier had warned foreigners to leave Israel for their own safety. A 46-year-old American from Cleveland, Ohio, was among the 16 killed in Wednesday’s bus bombing in Jerusalem.
A State Department official said US Middle East envoy John Wolf will leave for the region this weekend, probably tomorrow, to try to save Washington’s peace plan. “Saturday’s pretty firm, definitely the weekend,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
“We will go straight to Jerusalem and have a full range of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders,” he added. It will be Wolf’s first trip to the Middle East since US President George W. Bush asked him to take on the assignment.
Yesterday’s missile strike came after Sharon ratcheted up the rhetoric amid growing doubts about the peace road map that calls for a end to violence and a Palestinian state by 2005.
“(Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas) is a chick without feathers. We have to help him fight terror until his feathers grow,” a source quoted Sharon as telling an emergency meeting of his right-wing Cabinet.
Sharon, criticizing Abbas for failing to rein in fighters, described Palestinian leaders as “crybabies who let terror run rampant”, the source said.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Ziad Abu Amr said the Israeli leader was “throwing out silly descriptions and silly allegations” to cover his failure to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Palestinian officials have said Israeli military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have made it impossible for weakened Palestinian security forces to move against militants.
Hamas, which opposes the road map and calls for the destruction of Israel, broke off cease-fire talks with Abbas last Friday, accusing him of making too many concessions at a June 4 summit in Jordan with Sharon and Bush.
Jordan’s King Abdallah said the Middle East had reached a “critical crossroads” and urged the “friends of peace” to continue to back the process for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Last week at the Aqaba summit, the parties pledged to make real efforts to move forward. And that process is beginning,” he told the annual conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO).
“But the friends of peace must now stay the course,” he added.
“At the end of the day, we will need the full energies of regional and international leaders, working in real partnership, if we are to achieve a future of peace, security and coexistence,” he said.
Calling for an urgent need for rebuilding and stabilizing the Middle East, the king said that the credibility “not merely of our own countries, but of the international community” was at stake. “Now is the time to work together, to put our full force behind the process that will lead to the handover of Iraq to a credible Iraqi government, representing all Iraqis,” he said.
“And now is the time to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East,” he added. He also said that the “worsening situation” of workers in the Palestinian territories showed the urgent need for an end to the Israeli occupation.
