Details Emerge of Dead Hamas Leader

Israel’s decision to target Hamas’s top leadership reaped its first prominent victim Wednesday when a one-ton bomb was dropped by the Israel air force on the home of terrorist leader Nizar Rayan. The explosion, which shattered Rayan’s four-story apartment building, killed two of his four wives and four of his 12 children. Rayan had close links to Hamas's military wing and was well known in Gaza for donning combat fatigues and personally participating in clashes against Israeli forces. He sent one of his sons on an October 2001 suicide mission that killed two Israeli settlers in Gaza. A professor of Islamic law, Rayan had ignored the danger of the Israeli assault for six days, conspicuously showing himself in public and attending a mosque.