Israeli strike kills a top Hamas leader in Gaza
The missile strike on Nizar Rayan comes amid Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip and may signal a return to the Jewish state's previous practice of assassinating Hamas leaders.
Reporting from Gaza City and Jerusalem — An Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip killed a top Hamas political and military leader today, along with several family members, as the militant group continued to launch its own rockets deep into Israeli territory.
The continued clash came amid rising global calls for an end to the bloodshed, which has killed at least 410 Palestinians and four Israelis.
The attack on Nizar Rayan, confirmed by Israeli officials, family members and Hamas, may signal a shift in Israeli tactics as the assault on the Gaza Strip entered its sixth day. After nearly a week of pounding police stations, security compounds, rocket-launching cells and cross-border tunnels, the Jewish state may be reviving its former practice of assassination strikes on Hamas leaders.
Rayan, 49, was the most senior Hamas official killed since the movement's co-founders Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdulaziz Rantisi died in Israeli airstrikes less than a month apart in 2004, said a senior Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
An Islamic scholar and a university instructor, Rayan was a force in both the political and military wings of Hamas, which controls Gaza. Even as most senior Hamas leaders went into hiding when the Israeli air barrages began, Rayan made a point of living openly in a home in the Jabaliya refugee camp. He encouraged other leaders to follow suit.
All four of Rayan's wives and at least six of his 17 children died in the bombing, according to a family member. Three more Rayan children are missing and presume buried under the rubble of their home.
"He refused to leave his house; he preferred to be martyr," the Hamas official said.
Rayan was uniquely popular and respected in Hamas' military wing. Unlike most of the movement's civilian leadership, Rayan fought alongside his own troops in battles with Israeli soldiers and tanks.
He advocated suicide bombings, sending his 22-year-old son on 2001 suicide mission against an Israeli settlement.
Tanks and thousands of Israeli soldiers remained massed on the Gaza border today, awaiting an order to invade the densely packed and fortified coastal territory.
In the face of mounting international calls for an end to the campaign, Israeli officials defended the operation as necessary to ensure an end to the daily rocket launches from Gaza that threaten a widening swath of southern Israel.
"Hamas understands that Israel has changed the equation," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said before leaving for Paris. "The situation in which they shoot and we do not respond is over."
Livni's French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, has proposed a 48-hour halt in the fighting to allow delivery of humanitarian relief and give time for international mediators to work out a long-term truce.
ashraf.khalil@latimes.com
Abu Alouf is a special correspondent.
