Israel kills Hamas leader, truce off

Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior figure with a high media profile, was killed along with two bodyguards when four missiles fired by helicopter gunships shattered his car as it drove through Gaza City, witnesses and medics said.

Israel had hours earlier approved tougher military action against the militants following the suicide bombing that killed 20 people on a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday.

Hamas said it carried out the bus attack as retribution for the killing of members of the group, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, in Israeli Army raids that have continued despite the truce.

Hamas swiftly vowed to avenge his death. ‘‘The assassination of Abu Shanab … means the Zionist enemy has assassinated the truce and the Hamas movement holds the Zionist enemy responsible for the consequences,’’ spokesman Ismail al-Haniyah said in Gaza.

Hamas’s close ally Islamic Jihad also renounced the truce.

Reformist Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas called the missile attack ‘‘an ugly crime’’. Aides said it would trigger a relapse into tit-for-tat violence, thwarting peacemaking.

A Hamas official in Beirut said he hoped Abbas would change his mind after Thursday’s strike in Gaza.

‘‘Israel’s continuation of this escalatory policy will…weaken the Palestinian Authority’s ability to restore calm and to move on to the political process,’’ Information Minister Nabil Amr said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

After the attack, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza denounced Abbas and his adherence to the US-backed peace plan. ‘‘No to Abbas and no to his roadmap!’’ they shouted,

Earlier today, the Israeli Army swept into Jenin and Nablus and arrested wanted Palestinian militants, a spokesman said.

Israeli PM Ariel Sharon’s security Cabinet said in a statement after overnight deliberations that no progress on the roadmap was conceivable unless Palestinian authorities took action against militant factions behind attacks — as the peace plan requires.

‘‘If the Palestinian government does not take all necessary steps in the war on terror, it will not be possible to move to the stage of diplomatic talks,’’ it said.

The Palestinian Authority and analysts had considered Shanab among the few relative moderates in Hamas. He joined dialogue on the ceasefire with Israel. (Reuters)