The commander of Islamic Jihad's armed wing in the Gaza Strip and two lieutenants were killed in an Israeli air strike at the weekend as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed no let up against militants.
Ziad al-Ghnam, general commander of the Al-Quds Brigades, Raid al-Ghnam, an engineer commander, and local commander Mohammed al-Raai, were killed in the air strike in the southern town of Khan Yunis, the Brigades said on Sunday.
Israel accused Ziad al-Ghnam of orchestrating a string of anti-Israeli attacks, including the killing of a pregnant woman and her four daughters in May 2004, before Israel withdrew all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip. The army said Raai placed a roadside bomb and fired a rocket-propelled grenade during a May 2004 attack on the buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt in which five Israeli soldiers were killed.
Around 1,500 Palestinians attended a joint funeral for the Ghnam cousins in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, marching behind the bodies, shouting "revenge, revenge, in the heart of Israel" as gunmen rattled off shots into the air. "The continued Zionist aggression against our fighters and our people will not pass without a quick response in the heart of the Zionist entity," the Al-Quds Brigades said in a statement.
"We confirm the blood of every martyr strengthens our resolve to continue the work of jihad and strengthening the intifada against the occupiers." All three fighters were travelling in the same car in Khan Yunis when an Israeli aircraft fired two missiles into the vehicle on Saturday.
Four more Palestinians, at least two of them civilians, were killed in another Israeli air strike in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. Two mortar rounds were fired by Gaza militants into open fields in southern Israel on Sunday, albeit causing no casualties or damage, the army said. Olmert told his weekly cabinet meeting that attacks against militants would continue but praised the conduct of the new Western-backed Palestinian cabinet for opening diplomatic opportunities.
"War against terror is continuing without letting up. Yesterday the defence establishment carried out extremely important attacks against the Islamic Jihad where seven terrorists were killed.
"This pinpointed activity will continue anywhere in the south (Gaza) or in Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank)," Olmert said, nonetheless praising the new Palestinian for creating "new directions for cooperation".
"The actions taken by the new government... cautiously allow for the creation of new ways to cooperate between us and them that will allow us to move forward on the diplomatic channel," he added. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas last month sacked the Hamas-led unity government when the Islamist movement seized control of the Gaza Strip, setting up an emergency cabinet in its place. Hamas, which Israel boycotts as a terrorist organisation remains in control of Gaza where the new government effectively has no remit now that the Palestinians are split into two separate entities.
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