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Israelis kill Palestinian they call 'master bombmaker'
GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles Wednesday at a Palestinian Authority Interior Ministry building, killing Mustafa Sabbah, called a master bombmaker by the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF said Sabbah was the second-ranking official in the Palestine Popular Resistance group, an umbrella organization consisting of members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and the radical Islamic group Hamas. Fatah is the political wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization, has a military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, that has conducted terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians as well as attacks on the Israeli military and is considered a terrorist group by the United States. The IDF said Sabbah had built powerful bombs used in three attacks on Israeli Merkava tanks since February that killed seven Israeli soldiers and asserted that he was at work on a new attack. While the IDF called the killing of Sabbah a pinpoint strike carried out in self-defense, Palestinian officials were calling it an assassination. Meanwhile, IDF on Wednesday shut down district coordination offices in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Jenin that had been jointly staffed by Israeli and Palestinian security forces. The IDF said the presence of armed Palestinian police in its offices was a security threat. In recent weeks, a car bomb exploded at a coordination office in northern Gaza.
The offices coordinate security operations in the Palestinian territories between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian policemen. Other coordinating offices in the territories remain staffed by both Israeli and Palestinian security. Medical, economic and humanitarian efforts between Israelis and Palestinians are also handled by the offices, but will not be affected by the expulsions. In an unrelated incident Wednesday, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians near the West Bank town of Hebron during a search of caves, the Israeli army said. According to IDF, the Palestinians were members of Islamic Jihad and began shooting at Israeli forces. The Israelis said the two died in "an exchange of fire." Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a militant group dedicated to the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel. IDF also arrested 11 Palestinians during overnight security sweeps in the West Bank.
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