Israeli forces kill local Hamas leader - CNN.com

Israeli forces kill local Hamas leader - CNN.com

More trouble in the holy lands as Israeli anti-terror forces kill leaders of Hamas. I wonder what the current administration will do to sanction Israel for this action against known terrorists.

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Israeli anti-terror forces killed a suspected West Bank Hamas military leader Thursday, the country's military announced.

Abed El Majid Dodeen, 45, was shot dead in a joint operation by the Israeli Army and a police anti-terror unit, the army said. A local journalist in the region confirmed to CNN Dodeen had been killed.

The killing came hours before U.S. President Barack Obama was scheduled to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington. It will be their first meeting since Obama became president, and follows a visit to Washington two weeks ago by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel accused Dodeen of involvement in attacks including suicide bombings on buses in Jerusalem and Ramat Gan. Four people were killed in the Jerusalem attack, and six died in the Ramat Gan bombing. He was also involved in a foiled 2004 plan to attack a train line, Israel said.

Israeli forces surrounded his house in the village of Deir El Assal a Tahta, south of Hebron, Thursday morning and ordered him to give himself up, the army statement said. The security forces then tried to force him out using "different methods," they said, without specifying what those methods were.

Dodeen opened fire on the Israelis, who shot back, killing him, they said.

They seized a second person who was in the house, whom they identified as Ahmad A Fatah Hassin, an assistant of Dodeen's.

Dodeen, from the village of El Bureij, had been wanted by Israel since 1995. They identified him as the head of the Hamas military wing in the Hebron area.

He was arrested by Palestinian security in 1995 and jailed in Jericho. He was released in 2000 when the second intifada broke out and returned to operate in the Hamas military wing, Israel said.

Hamas, a militant Palestinian Islamist movement, controls Gaza but has limited sway in the West Bank, which is run by its secular rival Fatah. Abbas, the Palestinian leader who is meeting Obama Thursday, is the head of Fatah.