Two terror heads killed in IDF raids

[Gość: ZYDEK]

Two terror heads killed in IDF raids
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH


Two top Palestinian terror leaders were killed Tuesday in separate IDF raids
in the territories.

In the Gaza Strip, four missiles fired from an air force helicopter at a car
in the southern Gaza Strip killed the local military leader of the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine, sources said.

The IDF spokesman confirmed the raid in the Gaza town of Khan Yunis, in
which, according to reports, PFLP commander Nidal Salameh, 36, and at least
one bystander was killed in the raid that took place just before 9 a.m.
local time. Some media reported three people were also wounded in the raid.

Salameh was blamed for orchestrating a series of terror attacks against
Israelis in Gaza, media reports said.

"I was trying to stop a taxi when I heard a huge explosion," said Abed
Radwan, 25. "I saw ... a huge flame coming from the sky that hit the car."

Radwan said an old man riding a donkey was thrown into the air and seriously
wounded by the explosion, and that two other people were on the ground
bleeding. When he approached the car, he found a man completely burned
inside.

Ambulances and firefighters arrived at the scene and a cloud of smoke was
seen rising above the car, which had been reduced to a mass of twisted
metal.

Witnesses said helicopter gunships continued to hover over the area after
the attack.

In the West Bank, soldiers shot and killed a top Fatah leader, Mahmud Salah,
and his aide in a shootout at his home in the village of Khirbet Aliya near
Bethlehem.

Soldiers came to arrest Salah and then returned fire when Salah and his
deputy fired at them from the house, reports said.

In othe violence Tuesday, two Palestinian women were seriously wounded after
being shot by Israeli army troops while working on their farm in the village
of Kouzah east of Khan Yunis, Palestinian witnesses said. One of the women
shot in the village of Kouzah, identified as Ikram Kadeh, was undergoing
surgery for a gunshot wound to the neck, hospital officials said.

There was no immediate IDF comment on these woundings.

The violence came as the Palestinian legislature was set to convene in
Ramallah to approve Mahmud Abbas' new cabinet to set in motion the process
of unveiling a US-backed peace plan, known as the Road Map.

(With The Associated Press)