Israel keeps up heat on Palestinian militants

Israel kept up pressure on Palestinian militants yesterday, snatching two wounded fighters from their hospital beds as members of the Islamic group Hamas went underground to evade Israeli helicopter attacks.

Helicopter gunships fired missiles at a car carrying Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip yesterday, killing an elderly bystander, as Israel pressed on with one of its bloodiest hunts for militants in three years of violence.

Reformist Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, vying with President Yasser Arafat for control of security forces key to meeting US demands for a crackdown on militants, planned to convene parliament next week to discuss his government's future.

A moderate and proponent of a US-backed Middle East peace plan, Abbas has been weakened by the collapse of a truce he brokered, a surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence and moves by Arafat widely seen as attempts to undermine his authority.

The legislative session, which a senior Palestinian official said could lead to a vote of confidence, would give Abbas an opportunity to shore up support some 100 days after Arafat reluctantly appointed him under US and Israeli pressure.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, plainclothes Israelis, followed by soldiers with dogs, burst into a hospital and took away two wounded militants, one of whom was hooked to a respirator in intensive care, hospital officials said.

Israeli military sources said both men, wanted for involvement in organising an August 12 suicide bombing that killed one Israeli, were conscious at the time of arrest and transferred to hospital in Israel.

Both were wounded in a shoot-out last week with Israeli troops who surrounded the Rafidya hospital in Nablus after discovering three wanted militants were sheltering inside. The third militant was killed in the gunfight.

All belonged to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement.

Israeli forces intensified sweeps for militants in Nablus and other occupied West Bank areas after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 21 people on a Jerusalem bus on August 19, shattering a ceasefire underpinning the peace "road map".

Leaders and fighters in Hamas retreated into the shadows following the killings of deputy political chief Ismail Abu Shanab and four other members in Israeli helicopter missile strikes in Gaza in the past week.

"Dear mujahed (Islamic fighters), you are being watched closely around the clock. You are marked for liquidation," said a Hamas statement to its members.

"Your enemy is a coward with the tools of monitoring and killing. Therefore you are ordered to take strict measures that leave no room for chance," it said.

Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon said top militants faced "liquidation" after they called off the truce last week in the wake of Abu Shanab's death, which following the Jerusalem bus bombing that Hamas called revenge for army raids.