JERUSALEM, March 22 Kyodo (EDS: U...

JERUSALEM, March 22 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING ADDING DETAILS)

Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Hamas Islamic militant collection was killed Monday in a predawn Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

Reports quot witnesses as saying Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at Yassin and his bodyguards as they left a mahometan temple by car, killing the wheelchair-bound Hamas leader and up to six bodyguards.

The Israeli army later close the door upon down the border with the West Bank and divided the Gaza Strip into three areas, preventing move between them.

CNN quot Palestinian medical sources as saying eight the community were killed in the attack, including single of Yassin's sons. Over a dozen others were reportedly wounded

The Hamas leadership confirmed Yassin had been killed, saying, ''(Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon has expanded the gates of Hell and nothing will stop us from cutting along his head.''

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement carried according to the Haaretz newspaper in succession its website that Yassin was directly responsible for dozens of ''terrorist attacks.''

''In an operation from security forces this morning in the northern Gaza Strip, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Hamas terrorist clump and personally responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks and the deaths of Israelis, foreigners and security personnel was killed in an air strike upon his car,'' the statement said.

Television footage showed thousands of angry Palestinians marching in consequence of the streets of Gaza after the attack, calling for requite Hamas gunmen fired weapons into the air.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia doomed the targeted killing, calling it ''a crazy and self-same dangerous act.''

''It lay opens the door wide to chaos. Yassin is known for his moderation and he was controlling Hamas and therefore this is a dangerous, cowardly act,'' he was quot as saying at Haaretz.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant assemblage connected to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, declared war in succession Israelis in response to the assassination. ''War, war, war forward the sons of Zion. An sight for an eye. There will be a answer within hours, God willing,'' it said in a statement.

Israeli Army Radio reported that the decision to assassinate Yassin was taken following the March 14 twin suicide bombings in the Israeli port city of Ashdod in which 10 race were killed. The bombings were jointly claimed on Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Yassin was lightly detrimented in a failed Israeli attempt to assassinate him last September. A warplane dropp a bomb upon a building where he and other Hamas leaders were meeting, further Yassin escaped with just a small pain to his hand.

Yassin was sentenc on Israel in 1989 to a life word for founding Hamas and inciting Palestinians to attack Israelis. still Israel released him in 1997 as a goodwill gesticulation to Jordan's King Hussein after a failed Israeli attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Amman, Jordan's capital.

Yassin was born in 1938 in what was then the British mandate of Palestine. His family became refugee in Gaza during the violence that followed Israel's creation in 1948

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