Israeli security sources confirmed on Sunday that Israel was behind a car bombing in the Syrian capital of Damascus that killed a senior Hamas official, reported the Israeli website of Ha'aretz.

In response to the assassination of Ezzeddin Sheikh Khalil, an Israeli official said, "Some people lead dangerous lives".

After the assassination, Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman of Hamas told reporters in Gaza the assassination "is an Israeli attempt to expand the area of aggression carried out against the Palestinian people from the Palestinian territories to abroad."

Another Hamas spokesman in Damascus said the group vowed to strike back with attacks inside Israel.

In a statement, the group said the attack "stresses that these crimes, which unify the Palestinian blood inside and outside the Palestinian territories, would not terrorize us or stop us from pursuing the path of Jihad (holy war) and resistance."

The blast happened around 11:15 a.m. (08:15 GMT) in Damascus. Mohammed Nazzal, member of the Hamas political bureau, said a bomb had been planted in Khalil's car and it exploded as he tried to start it.

Israel Radio reported Khalil, 42, is believed to be in charge of Hamas' military wing outside the Palestinian territories.

Sheikh Khalil was born in Sheja'eya neighborhood, Gaza City in 1962. He grew up and finished his education at Gaza City's schools and the Islamic University, where he joined the brotherhood Muslim movement in Gaza in late 1970s.

When the Palestinian first intifada began in 1987 and ended in 1993, Sheikh Khalil was one of the local leaders of Hamas in his neighborhood, where he was put into Israeli jails several times during the Intifada.

In 1992, Israel expelled 425 Hamas and Jihad leaders and militants to an area in south Lebanon. Late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated in November 1996,approved the mass deportation and agreed the deportees to return back to Gaza after one year of being deported.

Sheikh Khalil was among the deportees that refused to return back to the Palestinian territories and preferred to head to Damascus, capital of Syria, where he joined the leadership of Hamas.

Sheikh Khalil's brother Rafiq, an engineer who lives in eastern Gaza, said that his brother was married and has four children, two boys and two girls.

Rafiq said his family won't be different from other families who suffer and had lost their children who had been killed by the Israelis.

He said his brother had never called his family since he had been deported in 1992, adding that he was living a kind of underground and secret life "where he knew that if Israelis don't kill him, he would die in other means."

Spokesman Abu Zuhri said "(Israel Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon is implementing his threats to assassinate leaders of Hamas abroad, and we would tell him that we can never keep quiet for such crimes."

He added all Hamas leaders in the territories and abroad are taking tightened security measures to avoid more assassinations.

"It is an endless war between Israel and Hamas. These assassinations would never break Hamas' determination to continue the Intifada until the end of the occupation," said Abu Zuhri. 

(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2004)