Hamas commander killed in Israeli air strike

Israeli helicopters killed four Palestinian fighters, including a fugitive Hamas commander, in a missile strike in the Gaza Strip, hours after its army chief declared all Hamas members "potential targets for liquidation".

Yesterday’s strike came as Palestinian leaders, under pressure from the US and Israel to crack down on militants after a deadly Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem, were locked in a power struggle over control over their security forces.

Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened a sustained military campaign against the armed groups unless the Palestinian Authority moves decisively against them. The helicopters struck after Palestinian militants fired a new longer-range missile into Israel today.

“Israel has no choice but act in those areas where the Palestinians are failing to do so,” said Gideon Meir, a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official.

Palestinian officials said the raid would undermine a planned Palestinian security clampdown that began yesterday with moves against arms smugglers, casting fresh doubt on an already shaky US-backed peace plan.

Witnesses in Gaza City said Apache helicopters that had approached under cover of darkness fired at least three missiles at a group of armed men sitting near the crowded beach front. At least five bystanders were injured.

Witnesses said some of the victims were decapitated by the assault, which took place just 100 yards from the Gaza City office of Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan. Weapons were found near the bodies.

Bystanders carried the bloodied body of one man to an ambulance. Others lit cigarette lighters to search the ground, picking pieces of flesh and shards of metal from the missiles from the sand.

Hamas identified the dead men as Hamas fighters Ahmed Aishtawi, Wahid Hamas, Ahmad Aub Helal and Mohammed Abu Lubda.

An Israeli military official said Aishtawi, 24, was the main target, describing him as a senior operative who had planned and executed attacks in Gaza and the West Bank.

A Hamas spokesman said Aishtawi was the leader of a unit that pioneered the firing of home-made missiles and specialised in hitting tanks.

Earlier yesterday, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed on a beach seven four miles from the Israeli city of Ashkelon. It was the deepest a Palestinian rocket has struck in Israel in recent memory, the army said.

The crude projectiles are regularly fired from Gaza into Israel and at Jewish settlements in Gaza. They rarely cause damage or injury. But Israel has moved armoured vehicles up to the border in recent days and said it was ready for an onslaught on the militants.

“Every member of Hamas is a potential target for liquidation,” Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon said, the first senior military official to outline the policy, adopted after the bus bombing.

“If at the end of the day, the Palestinian Authority doesn’t move against them, we will have to do so.”

Hamas remained defiant.

“If the Israelis thought assassinations would destroy our determination to continue in our resistance, to continue defending ourselves, they are mistaken,” Hamas spokesman Ismail Haniya said. “We will move ahead whatever the sacrifice.”

The Palestinian leadership, meanwhile, was in crisis after Yasser Arafat clashed with Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, over Arafat’s refusal to relinquish control over security forces.

Abbas and his security chief, Dahlan, have said they need control over all men under arms to confront the militants, but Arafat still controls the main Palestinian security forces.