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Israel hits back after Dimona blast

DUBAI: An Israeli air attack has killed a senior Hamas activist within hours of a suicide bombing in the Israeli town of Dimona.

An Israeli warplane attacked a car in northern Gaza which reportedly killed, Abu Said Qarmout, leader of the Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committees in Northern Gaza. The strike also wounded three persons, two of them seriously.

The strike took place after a suicide bombing on Monday in a mall in Dimona killed one woman and wounded 11. There has been no official word that the air strike was in retaliation to the suicide attack.

Hamas supporters, including the leader of the Lebanese Hizbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, have said Israel has killed more than a thousand Hamas functionaries over the past two years.

There has been confusion, so far, on the organisation which was responsible for the suicide attack.

Initially, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, linked to the Palestinian Fatah faction along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — a leftist group, claimed joint responsibility for the attack. However, the Hamas later said it had carried out the strike.

Contrary to the earlier Palestinian version that two attackers had got into Dimona after crossing the Rafah border into Egypt, the Hamas said the bombers belonged to the West Bank town of Hebron.

Palestinians had for 11days, forced open the Rafah border with Egypt, resulting in the free movement of Palestinians into Egyptian territory.

Israeli officials have been suggesting a possible link between theborder breach at Rafah to the suicide attack.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has condemned the suicide attack, but has also taken exception to an earlier Israeli military raid in the West Bank, in which two Palestinian fighters were killed.

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