OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 22 August 2003 — Israel yesterday killed senior Hamas official Ismail Abu Shanab in a missile strike, prompting the Palestinian resistance group to abandon a truce it declared eight weeks ago.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas denounced the Israeli assassination as criminal and said the attack would hinder his efforts to rein in hard-liners. “The assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab and his bodyguards is an ugly crime,” Abbas told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “We strongly condemn this action because it does not serve peace. Such operations negatively affect all the plans that the Palestinian Authority is undertaking,” he said.

The Palestinian leadership had decided on the clampdown just hours earlier.

Abu Shanab, in his early 50s, was riding in his white station wagon, along with two bodyguards, in Gaza City when the vehicle was hit by five missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter. The car burst into flames and three bodies were pulled from the wreckage.

Fifteen bystanders were hurt. Dozens of Hamas supporters at the scene dunked their fists in blood and soot, raised them in the air and called for revenge.

Israel has routinely targeted members of Hamas’ military wing, but has rarely gone after the group’s political leaders. Abu Shanab, a US-educated professor of engineering, was the third member of Hamas’ political wing to be killed in a targeted attack in the past two years.

Abu Shanab was widely regarded as a moderate in the group, and served as a liaison with Abbas during the prime minister’s efforts to persuade Hamas to halt attacks. He served as a Hamas spokesman.

Hamas formally called off a three-month unilateral cease-fire it declared June 29. “We consider ourselves no longer bound by this cease-fire,” said a Hamas leader, Ismail Hanieh, after identifying Abu Shanab’s decapitated body at a Gaza City morgue.

Another Hamas official, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the target of a failed Israeli missile strike in June, said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would pay a high price for the killing of Abu Shanab. “If Sharon thinks the Hamas political leadership fears assassination, he is mistaken,” he said.

“By assassinating Abu Shanab, Sharon ended the truce and announced its death,” Khaled Al-Batesh, a senior Islamic Jihad official, said.

The assassination came hours after Abbas ordered the arrest of all those directly involved in the Jerusalem bombing.

At the United Nations, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Israel and the Palestinians would fall off “a cliff” if they abandon a US-backed peace plan.