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Syrian firefighters and
security men gather near the wrecked car of Palestinian Ezzeddine Sobhi Sheikh
Khalil of the radical group Hamas that exploded 26 September 2004 in Damascus.
Sheikh Khalil, who was expelled by Israeli occupation forces to Lebanon during
the first intifada, was killed in the explosion and three other people wounded.
The Syrian interior ministry said in a statement published by the official Sana
news agency that the explosion was caused by a booby-trapped car. (Xinhua/AFP
PHOTO/Louai BESHARA)
A
file family picture shows Palestinian top Hamas militant Ezzeddine Sobhi Sheikh
Khalil who was killed 26 September 2004 when his car blew up this morning in
Damascus. Syria said the explosion that killed Sheikh Khalil and injured three
other people was caused by a booby-trapped car. A spokesman of the hardline
Palestinian movement Hamas said the killing of the militant leader was an
assassination by Israel's Mossad spy agency. (Xinhua/AFP
PHOTO)
JERUSALEM, Sept. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- Israeli security sources
confirmed on Sunday that Israel was behind a car bombing in the Syrian capital
of Damascus that killed a senior Hamas official, reported the Israeli website of
Ha'aretz.
In response to the assassination of Ezzeddin
Sheikh Khalil, an Israeli official said, "Some people lead dangerous
lives".
After the assasination, Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman
of Hamas told reporters in Gaza the assassination "is an Israeli attempt to
expand the area of aggression carried out against the Palestinian people from
the Palestinian territories to abroad."
Another Hamas
spokesman in Damascus said the group vowed to strike back with attacks inside
Israel.
In a statement, the group said the attack "stresses
that these crimes, which unify the Palestinian blood inside and outside the
Palestinian territories, would not terrorize us or stop us from pursuing the
path of Jihad (holy war) and resistance."
The blast happened
around 11:15 a.m. (08:15 GMT) in Damascus. Mohammed Nazzal, member of the Hamas
political bureau, said a bomb had been planted in Khalil's car and it exploded
as he tried to start it.
Israel Radio reported Khalil, 42,
is believed to be in charge of Hamas' military wing outside the Palestinian
territories.
Sheikh Khalil was born in Sheja'eya
neighborhood, Gaza City in 1962. He grew up and finished his education at Gaza
City's schools and the Islamic University, where he joined the brotherhood
Muslim movement in Gaza in late 1970s.
When the Palestinian
first intifada began in 1987 and ended in 1993, Sheikh Khalil was one of the
local leaders of Hamas in his neighborhood, where he was put into Israeli jails
several times during the Intifada.
In 1992, Israel expelled
425 Hamas and Jihad leaders and militants to an area in south Lebanon. Late
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated in November
1996,approved the mass deportation and agreed the deportees to return back to
Gaza after one year of being deported.
Sheikh Khalil was
among the deportees that refused to return back to the Palestinian territories
and preferred to head to Damascus, capital of Syria, where he joined the
leadership of Hamas.
Sheikh Khalil's brother Rafiq, an
engineer who lives in eastern Gaza, said that his brother was married and has
four children, two boys and two girls.
Rafiq said his
family won't be different from other families who suffer and had lost their
children who had been killed by the Israelis.
He said his
brother had never called his family since he had been deported in 1992, adding
that he was living a kind of underground and secret life "where he knew that if
Israelis don't kill him, he would die in other means."
Spokesman Abu Zuhri said "(Israel Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon is implementing
his threats to assassinate leaders of Hamas abroad, and we would tell him that
we can never keep quiet for such crimes."
He added all
Hamas leaders in the territories and abroad are taking tightened security
measures to avoid more assassinations.
"It is an endless war between Israel and
Hamas. These assassinations would never break Hamas' determination to continue
the Intifada until the end of the occupation," said Abu Zuhri.
Enditem
Hamas accuses Israel of assassinating its leader in
Damascus
GAZA, Sept. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- A spokesman for the Islamic
Resistance movement Hamas accused Israel of assassinating one of its top leaders
in a car bomb in Damascus earlier Sunday.
Sami Abu Zuhri
told reporters in Gaza the assassination "is an Israeli attempt to expand the
area of aggression carried out against the Palestinian people from the
Palestinian territories to abroad."
The Israeli website of
Ha'aretz reported on Sunday Israel had confirmed it is standing behind the
assassination of Ezzeddin Sheikh Khalil, one of the senior leaders of Hamas
movement in Damascus, in a car bomb attack. Enditem
Hamas militant killed in
Damascus
DAMASCUS, Sept. 26
(Xinhuanet) -- A militant from radical Palestinian movement Hamas was killed in
a car explosion in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Sunday, a Syrian official
confirmed.
The official from Syrian Interior Ministry, who
declined to give his name, confirmed that Ezzeddin Sheikh Khalil, 42, a member
of Hamas, was killed in the explosion.
The official said
that Khalil, who was exiled by Israel to Lebanon in 1992, came to Syria in 1994
and was not allowed to return to the Palestinian
territories.
The explosion took place at around 11: 15 am
(0815 GMT) near a cloverleaf junction in the al-Zahera district in southern
Damascus,witnesses told Xinhua.
The car caught fire after
the explosion and a man was seen in the driver's seat. The window of a nearby
car was also broken to pieces.
The man was immediately
taken to a nearby hospital by police, the car was taken away by local
authorities and the site was cleaned.
Mohamed, an owner of a
small shop just beside the site, told Xinhua that he rushed outside when hearing
the loud explosion and saw blood on the ground and a Pajero car destroyed.
Xinhua correspondent at the site also saw that the windows
of the 1st and 2nd floors of a nine-story building nearby were shattered to
pieces.
About 150 riot police surrounded the scene and
passers-by were asked to leave. Enditem
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