| Submit your comments on this article |
| Middle East |
| Egyptian Qaeda boomed in Ein el-Hilweh... |
| 2003-03-01 |
| An Egyptian man with purported links to al-Qaida was killed Saturday in a bomb explosion at Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp. The man, an Islamic activist and member of a small extremist Palestinian group, died instantly when the bomb placed in a car detonated outside a small restaurant he owned in the Ein el-Hilweh "What's in a name? A corpse by any other name is still a corpse." The bomb went off at 5 a.m. as Shanouha, 39, emerged from the Al-Nour mosque, where he prayed each morning, and crossed the street toward his restaurant. Two Palestinian bystanders were wounded and several houses damaged. Palestinian officials said Shanouha belonged to a small Palestinian extremist group called the "Islamic Jihadi Movement" and that he was among Islamic guerrillas who fought Russian troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Sheik Jamal Khattab, a Muslim cleric who heads the Islamic Jihadi Movement and represents various Islamic factions in the Ein el-Hilweh camp, accused Israel's intelligence service Mossad of assassinating al-Masri. Yep. It had to be them, just like an "Islamic Jihad Movement" has to be headed by a cleric. And a sheikh, too... "The incident coincided with the passing of an (Israeli) reconnaissance plane, which leads us to believe that the Israeli Mossad is behind the bombing," Khattab told reporters. Several witnesses reported hearing a plane's drone overhead throughout the night and until the bombing. Khattab said the car carrying the bomb came from outside the camp and its driver parked near the mosque Friday evening, claiming he was going to buy cigarettes from a nearby shop, but never returned. That's the better part of valor, isn't it? More detail, from Dawn... The mosque was frequented by members of Osbat al-Ansar, a militant group on Washington's list of "terrorist" organizations suspected of links to Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "The dead man was targeted personally," said Sheikh Jamal Khattab, an Islamist leader in the southern Ain el-Hilweh camp, but he could not say if the man was a member of Osbat al-Ansar. Two other people were also wounded in the blast. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |