Suicide bomber kills 4 Israelis days after polls
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claims responsibility
Afp, Jerusalem
A Palestinian militant leader was killed in an explosion in Gaza City yesterday but Israel denied responsibility for the blast that came after a West Bank suicide bombing left four Israelis dead. The deadly violence followed Israel's watershed election earlier this week and the installation of the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Doctors identified the dead man as Abu Yussef al-Gouga, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a small militant group that has carried out a string of rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza. The group was never formally party to a truce -- now lapsed -- that was signed by other militant groups early last year. Gouga had been driving his car in a Gaza City neighbourhood at the time of the explosion, which gutted the vehicle, witnesses said, insisting that it was the result of at least one rocket fired by an Israeli aircraft. But an Israeli army spokesman insisted: "It has nothing to do with the IDF (Israel Defence Forces)." Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz had ordered the security forces to step up their efforts to take out militant leaders after an imported industrially manufactured rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip for the first time in place of the makeshift devices previously used by militant groups. Defence sources quoted by the Israeli media said that rocket was believed to be an Iranian-manufactured version of a Grad with a range of 20km-- sufficient to reach the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod if properly fired. Overnight, Israeli land and sea-based artillery pounded a no-go zone unilaterally declared on areas of the northern Gaza Strip in range of Ashkelon, with orders no longer to spare Palestinian police posts in the area. The West Bank suicide bombing which killed the four Israelis late on Thursday was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of moderate Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas's mainstream Fatah movement. Three Jewish settlers and a 20-year-old woman performing civilian national service were killed when the bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the Kedumim settlement, west of the city of Nablus, police said. The bomber, who was disguised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, had hitched a ride with an elderly couple who were among the dead.
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