GAZA CITY, 8 December 2005 — One militant was killed and eight other Palestinians wounded yesterday in an Israeli airstrike on their vehicle in the Rafah region of the southern Gaza Strip, military sources and witnesses said.
Military sources said that the target of the attack, Mahmud Al-Arqan, had been working with members of the radical Islamic Jihad movement which was behind a suicide bombing on a shopping mall on Monday.
The strike comes after Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz gave the green light to the resumption of targeted killing operations in the wake of the bombing at the mall in Netanya which killed five Israelis and following a series of rocket attacks on Israeli soil fired from Gaza.
Meanwhile, the prominent Palestinian MP Hanan Ashrawi said yesterday she was running for re-election in January on a list of fellow independents that would include finance minister Salam Fayad.
Ashrawi, a former Palestinian peace negotiator with Israel, said the names of other prominent Palestinian figures who will also appear on the slate would be unveiled in the coming days.
“Salam Fayad has agreed to head the list and we are still working on other names,” Ashrawi told AFP.
Fayad, whose efforts to bring greater transparency of Palestinian finances have been widely praised, is not currently an MP.
