Israel kills Hamas leader amid reports of Gaza attack

Israeli soldiers ambushed and killed a senior Hamas militant in the Gaza Strip yesterday, as it emerged that six Hamas members killed over the weekend were adapting a model aircraft to carry explosives for attacks on Israelis.

Riyad abu Zeid was shot by undercover Israeli soldiers while driving on the Gaza coast road yesterday morning. He died of his injuries after being taken to an Israeli hospital in an army helicopter. Palestinian witnesses described Israeli soldiers running between cars on the busy coast road, the only route between Gaza City and the southern Gaza Strip open to Palestinians. When they came level with the black Honda in which Mr Abu Zeid was travelling, they opened fire. Another witness described seeing shots fired at the black Honda from a blue van full of vegetables parked at the side of the road.

The Israeli army said it had not intended to assassinate Mr Abu Zeid but to capture him, and that its soldiers only shot at him after he opened fire. The Israeli army has an openly stated policy of assassinating Palestinian militants.

In a statement, the army said that Mr Abu Zeid was a close associate of Salah Shehadeh, a Hamas leader who was assassinated last July in an Israeli air strike that also killed nine Palestinian children. It also said he had taken over Shehadeh's role in the group. Shehadeh was one of the most senior links between Hamas' political and armed wings.

The killing came amid reports that the Israeli army is preparing for an offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas militants killed four soldiers in a bomb attack on an Israeli tank on Saturday. According to the Israeli media yesterday, the army has ruled out reoccupying the Gaza Strip, as it did with Palestinian cities in the West Bank, but is instead planning more assasinations and attacks on Hamas' members. Any attempt to invade and reoccupy the Gaza Strip would meet with heavy resistance.

In what appeared to be part of such an operation, about 35 Israeli tanks moved into Gaza City yesterday. Soldiers surrounded a house belonging to Ahmad Ghandour, a Hamas militant, and blew it up. Israeli radio reported that the soldiers came under fire and Palestinian hospital officials said two Palestinians were killed in the exchange.

The new assault on Hamas may be in response to the group's improving firepower, and its growing influence in the Gaza Strip while the Palestinian Authority is weakened by the Israeli military onslaught on the West Bank. It also comes during new talks between Israeli and PA officials, which Hamas fiercely opposes.

It emerged yesterday that the six Hamas militants killed in a mysterious explosion in Gaza on Sunday were working to adapt a model aircraft to carry explosives. Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, one of the leaders of Hamas' political wing, confirmed that the dead men planned to use the aircraft in a militant attack.

Mr Rantisi claimed that the model aircraft had been booby-trapped by the Israeli army before it reached Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and was detonated by remote control as part of an operation against Hamas. Another possibility is that the men died when their explosives detonated accidentally.

At the funeral for the men in Gaza yesterday, Mr Rantisi vowed to avenge the deaths, saying: "There will be more martyrdom operations" – a euphemism for suicide bombings.