- Title: WEST BANK/GAZA: A CAR BOMB HAS KILLED TWO LEADING PALESTINIAN MILITANTS
- Date: 4th June 2002
- Summary: (W3) GAZA (JULY 4, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. SLV/SV NIGHT VIEWS CROWDS AROUND CAR (2 SHOTS) 0.11 2. SV/CU OF DESTROYED CAR (4 SHOTS) 0.33 3. SV OF CROWDS STANDING BY DESTROYED CAR/ CAR BEING TOWED AWAY (2 SHOTS) 0.52 (W3) RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (JULY 5, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 4. MCU (English) GHASSAN KHATIB, PALES
- Embargoed: 19th June 2002 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: RAMALLAH AND JENIN, WEST BANK/ GAZA CITY AND NETZARIM JUNCTION, GAZA
- City:
- Country: Palestinian Territories
- Reuters ID: LVA1UFA04URA7M2INNP9XPO3WNHW
- Story Text: In the Gaza Strip, a car bomb has killed two leading
Palestinian militants in an attack their comrades called an
Israeli "assassination".
The violence has overshadowed Yasser Arafat's reshuffling
of the hierarchy of his much-criticised security apparatus.
Under intense U.S. pressure for reform, he has allegedly
dismissed his powerful West Bank security commander and the
Palestinian police chief.
Violence flared in the Gaza Strip on Thursday (July 4)
night when a car bomb killed two Palestinian militants in an
attack their comrades called an Israeli "assassination".
The two men killed were identified as Jihad A'marin, 45,
and his 33-year-old assistant Wael Abu Namara, members of the
al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said A'marin's
death was a big blow to the group because of his vast
experience.
The blast in a busy street left the car a mangled wreck
and sent smoke rising over the area near the Shati refugee
camp in the Gaza Strip.
A Reuters correspondent at the scene saw the headless,
dismembered body of a second victim lying near the car.
Palestinian militants said they believed a bomb had been
planted in A'marin's car and activated from the sky. Witnesses
said they saw a helicopter hovering over the area before and
after the blast.
Palestinian authorities condemned the attack.
"This most recent Israeli assassination of Palestinians in
Gaza inside the Palestinian populated areas of Gaza is another
example that Israel is insisting on its policy of using force
and violence in order to achieve objectives", said Palestinian
Labour Minister Ghassan Khatib.
"Unfortunately the use of violence by Israel is only going
to be responsible for further security deterioration because
this Israeli approach has been all along responsible for
bringing about a continuity of the violence and counter
violence", he continued.
The Israeli army declined comment.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is one of the main groups
behind a wave of suicide attacks and shooting ambushes that
have killed scores of Israelis during the 21-month-old
Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Israel has tracked down and killed dozens of militants
under an internationally condemned policy it calls
self-defence but the Palestinians have branded state-sponsored
assassination.
Chanting "Death to Israel", thousands of Palestinians
vowed to avenge A'marin's death as they marched at his funeral
later on Friday.
At least 30,000 people took part in the march. Masked men
fired their rifles in the air. .
A'marin's remains were in a wooden coffin painted with the
black, green and red colours of the Palestinian flag.
Israel arrested A'marin in 1972 for his affiliation with a
banned group and for staging attacks on Israeli forces in the
Gaza Strip.
Israel sentenced him to three life terms in jail for his
role in attacks but he was released with hundreds of other
Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of three Israeli
pilots killed in Lebanon and held by a Palestinian radical
group.
A'marin went into exile in Tunisia. He returned to Gaza
with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1994, was expelled
again for another two years, then returned and became a
colonel in the Palestinian security forces.
He led the Brigades in Gaza after the Palestinian uprising
against Israeli occupation began in September 2000.
Fellow members of the Brigades say A'marin had ignored
calls by the Palestinian Authority to halt attacks and had
spent several months in a Palestinian jail because of this.
The number of men under his command was not clear but
Brigades members estimated it was several thousand. They did
not say who would replace him as the group's leader in Gaza.
Israeli tanks, meanwhile, entered Gaza. Witnesses at the
Netzarim Junction said tanks had briefly opened fire. Soldiers
arrested several Palestinian men before retreating back into
Israel.
Netzarim junction has been an almost permanent flashpoint,
with gunbattles, suicide bombings and stone throwing taking
place even before the beginning of the Palestinian uprising in
september 2000.
Earlier on Thursday officials said Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat formally sacked his security chief in the West
Bank, in the first signs of a high-level shake-up carried out
under intense U.S. pressure for reform.
A senior Palestinian official said Jibril Rajoub, powerful
head of the Palestinian Preventive Service in the West Bank
and once mooted as a potential successor to the 73-year-old
Arafat, was served dismissal papers by the president on
Thursday.
An official said Arafat had decided on Wednesday to shunt
Rajoub to Jenin as governor of the northern West Bank city and
appoint the incumbent there, Zuhair Manasra, as the new
Preventive Security chief in the West Bank.
But confusion over Rajoub's status swirled after he denied
he had been sack, although he said he would step down if so
ordered in writing by Arafat.
"As soon as I receive a presidential decree for me to
leave the position I leave it immediately", Rajoub said.
Rajoub's reputation suffered after he slipped out of his
West Bank headquarters hours before the Israeli army laid
siege to it in April and ordered his men to surrender.
Palestinian leaders are grappling with pressure for reform
to placate popular discontent over alleged corruption and
misrule and satisfy Israeli and U.S. conditions for renewed
Middle East peace talks envisaging a Palestinian state.
In the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, residents
protested in front of the United Nations offices, claiming
that the U.N. and the Palestinian Authority have been
postponing payments due to arrive from the United Arab
Emirates for rebuilding Palestinian houses badly damaged
during Israel's last incursions to the camp.
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