Gunmen Kill Israeli Minister

Suspected Palestinian gunmen assassinated far-right Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi yesterday, dealing a serious blow to US-led peace efforts.

The radical Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) group claimed responsibility for the first Arab assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

The PFLP said it carried out the attack on Zeevi, a 75-year-old former general, in retaliation for the assassination of its leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, by Israeli forces in August.

"The Israeli Government, by killing Abu Ali Mustafa, has opened the gates of hell on itself and now the fire is approaching it," PFLP spokesman Ali Jaradat said.

As news of the shooting broke, dozens of Palestinians in the Ain El-Hilweh refugee camp in South Lebanon rushed into the street carrying pictures of Mustafa and danced.

Zeevi, who tendered his resignation as tourism minister from Sharon's cabinet on Monday, was hit by two bullets at the door to his room in the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem.

Police said Zeevi did not have a bodyguard from the Shin Bet internal security service in line with official policy to assign personal protection only to cabinet members deemed to be at risk.

"Minister Zeevi arrived at the hospital dead, with no pulse and not breathing. We resuscitated him, and the heart began beating again but all the efforts afterwards failed," said Avi Rivkin, of Hadassah Hospital.

Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said the shooting showed that the Palestinian Authority "had done nothing at all to stop terrorism or to arrest terrorists."

The assassination raised the spectre of Israeli retaliation at a time when the United States is trying to calm Israeli-Palestinian violence in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

(China Daily