Palestinian gunmen shot dead a Jewish rabbi settler today in what militants called the first response to an Israeli air strike that killed 15 Palestinians on Tuesday.
Two Palestinian militant groups claimed responsibility for killing Rabbi Elimelech Shapira (43) and wounding another man in an ambush as they drove along a road near a Jewish settlement close to the West Bank city of Qalqilya.
"The operation is part of the armed struggle and in response to the assassination of our people in Gaza and [Hamas militant] Salah Shehada," the Popular Army Front-Return Battalions, a coalition of militant groups, said in a statement.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group which is part of the coalition and has links to Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, also took responsibility for the ambush.
The Islamic group Hamas has vowed to kill hundreds of Israelis to avenge Tuesday's attack in which an F-16 warplane fired a missile at the house of Shehada, commander of Hamas's military wing, killing him and 14 others including nine children.
AFP