MIDDLE EAST: Israeli troops killed eight Palestinians, including a leading Islamic Jihad militant, yesterday, in the bloodiest fighting in weeks in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli military official and Palestinian sources said.
The violence drew vows of revenge from Islamic Jihad, a group that has spearheaded attacks against Israel throughout a more than five-year Palestinian uprising. An Israeli military spokesman, Capt Jacob Dallal, said soldiers shot and killed Elias Eshkar, a "top Islamic Jihad terrorist in the West Bank" blamed for being the mastermind of attacks that have killed more than 50 Israelis since early 2005.
The most recent suicide bombing blamed on Eshkar killed 11 people in a Tel Aviv restaurant in mid-April, the highest death-toll in an attack in the Jewish state in about two years.
Five other militants died in the raid, in which soldiers surrounded a house in the town of Qabatiya, as Eshkar hid inside - these included Eshkar's brother, Capt Dallal said.
The troops killed the gunmen after they shot at the soldiers, ignoring an appeal to surrender, he said.The soldiers shot dead a seventh Palestinian while dispersing protesters during the raid, he added.
Palestinian medics and security sources said two of the seven killed in Qabatiya were civilians.
In the nearby town of Jenin, soldiers shot dead Ali Omar Jabarin, a 21-year-old intelligence officer, and wounded four of his colleagues during a gun battle at their Jenin headquarters, Palestinian sources said.
The Israeli army said soldiers exchanged fire with gunmen during a raid in Jenin to detain wanted militants, and reported one Palestinian was hit by gunfire there, but could not confirm whether he was killed.
Islamic Jihad's armed wing condemned the Israeli raids as "a new Zionist massacre" and vowed "we will continue our martyrdom operations".
Israel mounts frequent military raids in the West Bank against suspected militants. Islamic Jihad often says its attacks are a response to these raids. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement condemning the violence and urged the world to intervene.
In the Gaza Strip, masked gunmen shot and wounded a Palestinian bodyguard for an intelligence chief reporting to Mr Abbas, security officials said.
Gunmen later fired at a senior Hamas commander as he left a Gaza City mosque, witnesses said. He was unharmed.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the shootings, which were further cases of internal violence in Gaza where rivalry between Hamas and Mr Abbas's Fatah faction has led to bloodshed in recent weeks.
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah)