by headless in gaza
Monday, Aug. 25, 2003 at 6:52 PM
The Palestinian man shown in this Reuters photograph was decapitated by an Israeli helicopter gunship missile strike.
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Israeli Occupation Army Assassinates 4 Palestinians in Gaza Strike
Sunday Aug 24, 2003
GAZA - Israel killed a commander and three other members of Hamas's armed wing in a helicopter missile strike, prompting a vow of revenge from the Palestinian militant group as a U.S.-backed peace plan took another battering.
The four were killed when U.S. supplied helicopter gunships swooped down and fired U.S. made missiles at them as they walked near a beach in Gaza City. "The four men were sitting on a hilltop overlooking the beach. They stood up and were about to cross the road when helicopters fired four missiles," a witness said. "Three missiles hit the people directly and a fourth missile landed behind them," he said.
The bodies were decapitated or mangled almost beyond recognition, medics said.
Hamas's spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said Israel would "pay the price" for killing members of his group. Hamas and other militant groups had already vowed to carry out revenge attacks after Israel assassinated a senior Hamas leader in a missile strike in Gaza City on Thursday.
The assassination -- in retaliation for Hamas's killing of 21 people in a suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday in yet another tit-for-tat attack -- prompted militant groups to dissolve a seven-week-old truce which underpinned the so-called peace "road map."