Hamas leader's son dies in Israeli attack
Israel launched its revenge attacks for two suicide bombings with an air raid on a senior Hamas leader’s home in Gaza City today.
Mahmoud Zahar escaped with an injured leg but his son and a bodyguard were killed, hospital officials said.
In all, about 25 people were hurt, including Zahar’s wife and daughter.
The bomb hit the Zahar home in Gaza City’s Rimal district, levelling the building and sending huge plumes of smoke into the air. Several adjacent houses were also destroyed. Palestinian police were struggling to control an angry crowd that gathered at the scene.
Zahar, who witnesses said was in a garden beside the house at the time, was lightly hurt in the leg and taken to nearby Shifa Hospital. The bodies of the dead were badly burned.
Hospital officials identified one of the dead as Zahar’s 30-year-old bodyguard. Relatives identified the other victim as Zahar’s son, Khaled, 29.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Staff at the hospital called over loudspeakers for people to donate blood to help treat the wounded, who were brought to the hospital in ambulances and private cars. Among the wounded were five children and three women, hospital officials said. Three of the wounded were in critical condition.
Zahar’s wife suffered serious injuries but was in stable condition after surgery, said Dr Hazaa Abed, director of surgery at Shifa Hospital. A daughter of Zahar was also lightly injured.
Zahar himself left hospital, and Hamas officials said he was taken to a safe place.
The strike flattened Zahar’s two-storey house, destroyed two nearby buildings and damaged a mosque. Witnesses described feeling the ground shake and seeing a spray of debris. A fog of dust covered the area for several minutes.
Men were searching through the rubble to check if anyone was buried underneath. It wasn’t clear if there were other people missing.
Rami Salameh, 29, helped take Zahar out of an ambulance. “He had his hand behind his head and his hand was covered with blood,” Salameh said. “When I moved him to the stretcher with the help of other people he screamed from pain in his back. But he was talking to us saying, ’I am OK. I am OK.”’
The air strike came a day after suicide bombers apparently dispatched by Hamas killed 15 Israelis in twin attacks at a bus stop crowded with soldiers and at a popular Jerusalem nightspot.
Hamas has stopped short of claiming responsibility for the bombings, but has threatened unprecedented revenge for Israel’s failed attempt over the weekend to kill several Hamas leaders, including founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, in an air strike.
After the air strike, hundreds of students from the Islamic University, where Zahar is the dean of the nursing school, gathered at the hospital. Some of them held Hamas banners. Others chanted, “Death to Sharon” and “God is greater than the aggressors.”
