Israeli air strike kills Hamas militant

Israel has pressed ahead relentlessly with its hunt for Palestinian militants, killing a Hamas fugitive in an air strike and sending bulldozers into Gaza to flatten cover for cross-border rocket attacks.

Palestinian authorities, meanwhile, shut down the bank accounts of nine Islamic charities to investigate whether they channel money to armed groups, opening up a new front in a clampdown sought by the United States.

The helicopter strike last night in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis killed Hamdi Kalakh as he was driving a donkey cart along a residential street, Palestinian officials and witnesses said. At least three other people were reported to have been injured.

Hamas supporters said Kalakh, 23, was a member of Hamas’ military wing.

The Israeli army said he was responsible for mortar, rocket and bomb attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. An army spokesman said the raid thwarted a mortar attack on the nearby Gush Katif Jewish settlement.

Earlier, Israeli bulldozers and tanks moved briefly into northern Gaza after a rocket struck near the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, the militants’ deepest strike yet into Israel using the crude homemade projectiles.

It was the first ground foray into Palestinian-controlled land since Israel withdrew from parts of Gaza in July under the US-backed “road map” plan. Security officials said it was not a prelude to a major operation.

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday he had instructed his defence minister to take “all necessary steps” to stop the shelling. Sharon said Hamas was trying to hit a power plant just south of Ashkelon. The rockets have caused little damage or injury, but Israel considers them a strategic threat.

The Palestinian Monetary Authority ordered the shut down of 39 accounts of nine charities on Sunday. The move was revealed yesterday, when banks in Gaza City turned away hundreds of Palestinians when they tried to pick up their monthly support cheques.

Dore Gold, an Israeli government spokesman, welcomed the move. “There have been charities that Israel has long suspected of being front organisations for Hamas,” he said. “Anything that serves this need (of stopping the flow of money) is a positive development.”

Monetary authority spokesman Abdel Maguid Mashrawi said the aim was to “monitor the money that is coming from outside, and to make sure that this money is used by these institutions for service purposes”.

Palestinian officials said they were trying to find a way to monitor the money transfers so that welfare payments could resume soon.

In December, Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, at the time number two in the PLO, asked

Saudi Arabia to divert donations for two of the charities – Al Jamiya Al Islamiya and As-Salah – to the Palestinian Authority. Abbas wrote at the time that he believed the two were fronts for Hamas, Palestinian officials said.

Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi denounced Abbas for giving in to US and Israeli pressure, while insisting the charities had “nothing to do with Hamas”.

US president George Bush, responding to the August 19 bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 21 people, announced last week that the United States was freezing the funds of six senior Hamas figures as well as of five charities that he accused of funding Hamas.

Those five charities, four of which are based in Europe, are different from the nine operating in the Gaza Strip. But one – As-Salah – said it received most of its funds from the European charities on the US list.

In the past three years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority has increasingly stopped providing welfare services, and private charities, including Islamic ones receiving large sums of money from abroad, have filled the void.

About 2,000 welfare recipients organised a protest march yesterday after learning they would not receive their monthly cheques. “We are not terrorists. Freezing the bank accounts is a crime,” read one of their banners.