An Israeli missile killed at least 11 Palestinian civilians including four children in Gaza, medical officials said, apparently an attack on a top militant that brought a three-storey home crashing down.

PALESTINIAN leaders formally ended a four-year rift between secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas at a ceremony in Egypt, a reconciliation their people see as crucial for their drive to set up an independent state.

TWO years ago this week, a bomb exploded in a jeep in Damascus decapitating Imad Mughniyeh. It bore all the hallmarks of a Mossad assassination.

Hamas’ political chief today laid out conditions under which the militant Palestinian group would work to calm anger in “the Muslim street” over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in some Western media.

AFTER Israel’s assassination of two of its leaders in less than a month, Hamas has decided to keep the identity of its new supremo in the Palestinian territories a secret.