Islamic militant leader shot dead

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a local leader of the radical Islamic Jihad movement in the West Bank today, members of the militant group and Palestinian security officials said.

The Israeli army denied any knowledge of the shooting.

Ahmed Khalil Assad, 35, was shot as he left his home with his two-year-old daughter, said a Palestinian security official.

Witnesses said he was headed to the grocery store he operates in Artas, a village near Bethlehem.

A relative, Abed Assad, 26, claimed Israeli soldiers opened fire in Assad’s direction from a hill near his house.

Assad was shot more than 20 times in the head, chest and abdomen and was dead on arrival at nearby Beit Jalla hospital, said its director, Dr Peter Qumri. His daughter sustained shrapnel injuries in her right leg, he said.

Abdullah Shami, a senior political leader of the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, said he expected the military wing of the Islamic Jihad to respond to Assad’s death.

‘‘This assassination is part of the continued Israeli aggression, but this policy of assassination will not push us to surrender or to kneel down. We will move forward in our resistance, by all means,’’ he said.

Also today, a Palestinian police officer, Obeid Abu Ariban, 55, died from injuries sustained during a confrontation between Palestinian police and Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip last week.

Yesterday a US-led commission issued a draft report that said Israel should freeze settlement construction but did not recommend sending an international force to the region, Palestinian officials said.

Diplomatic sources in Washington said the panel blamed neither Israelis nor Palestinians directly for igniting seven months of violence that has killed 433 people on the Palestinian side and 72 on the Israeli side.

Israel had no immediate comment on the document which U.S. officials handed to both sides in brief meetings in Tel Aviv and the West Bank town of Ramallah.

The international commission, led by former US Senator George Mitchell, was formed as part of an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire agreement that was brokered by the United States in October but never implemented.

Israel and the Palestinians have until May 15 to respond to the draft report, before final publication.