Additional reporting by Yasser el-Bana, IOL Correspondent

GAZA CITY, August 21 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) � Israel assassinated senior Hamas political leader Ismail Abu Shanab on Thursday, August 21, drawing the group�s declaration of ending the truce proclaimed by the main Palestinian groups on June 29.

Abu Shanab and two of his bodyguards were killed in an Israeli air strike on his car in central Gaza City, the group and eyewitnesses said.

The three died when an Israel F-16 swooped down on the city and fired a volley of rockets at Abu Shanab's station wagon, the office of Hamas spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin said according to Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Medical sources said 14 people were wounded, four of them seriously, in the air raid, which came after the Israeli government announced it would launch military reprisals after a bomb blast in occupied Jerusalem on Tuesday, August 19.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the blast in response to Israeli escalation of attacks against Palestinian-ruled areas and continued assassination and detention campaigns against Palestinian activists.

Israeli troops had earlier launched a rocket attack on a house in the southern West Bank city of Al-Khalil, killing Mohamed Al-Sedr, a local leader of the Islamic Jihad, triggering vows of revenge from the resistance group.

Israeli forces killed two Palestinians earlier on Thursday in fresh incursions into the West Bank cities of Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarem. They also injured six people and abducted several Palestinian activists during the incursions.

End Of Truce

In quick reaction to the assassination of Abu Shanab, Hamas officially declared an end to its ceasefire with Israel following the deadly Israeli attack on one of its senior political leaders, Ismail Haniyeh, senior Hamas official, said.

"The assassination of Abu Shanab is also the assassination of the ceasefire," Haniyeh said after the death of Abu Shanab.

Speaking to IslamOnline.net, Haniyeh said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cherish the illusion that by killing Hamas leaders he would put an end to the Palestinian resistance.

"It is a new life for Hamas and for the Intifada and the resistance," he said, adding that days would prove that assassinating Hamas leaders "would pump new blood into the Palestinian people."

Haniyeh also demanded Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmmoud Abbas to step down if he insisted on eschew resistance.

"Abu Mazen (Abbas's nom de guerre) should, if he pursued this approach, leave his post and distance himself from the resistance," he said.

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2003-08/21/article03.shtml

Abu Shanab was born in Gaza city in 1950. He received his bachelor degree in civil engineering from the Egyptian Al-Mansoura University and master degree from a U.S. university. Before his death, he was a lecturer in the Gaza-based Islamic University.