GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - A Palestinian militant group said early Thursday it executed an 18- year-old Israeli settler kidnapped earlier in the West Bank. The statement from the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza said the settler, Eliahu Asheri, had been executed. The group, which has links to the ruling Hamas, had threatened to execute the Israeli if Israel did not halt its invasion of Gaza.
Palestinian security officials in the West Bank city of Ramallah said they believed a body had been found.
Israeli forces arrested the deputy prime minister of the Hamas government, two other Cabinet ministers and four lawmakers in a raid on a complex of buildings in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian security officials said. Israeli forces also arrested Labor Minister Mohammed Barghouti. All those arrested were from Hamas.
Earlier Wednesday, Air strikes and sonic booms shook Gaza as Israeli troops backed by tanks penetrated the impoverished coastal strip in a massive show of might designed to force Islamic militants to free a soldier whose fate has jolted Mideast politics.
In a bold warning to the country that shelters the political leader of the Islamic Hamas group, Israeli warplanes buzzed the home of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Palestinians filled up on basic supplies after war planes knocked out electricity, raising the specter of a humanitarian crisis. The Hamas- led government's information ministry warned of "epidemics and health disasters" because of damaged water pipes feeding central Gaza.
Witnesses reported heavy shelling around Gaza's long-closed airport, and Israeli missiles hit two empty Hamas training camps and a rocket- building factory. Warplanes flew low over the strip, rocking it with sonic booms and shattering windows. Troops in Israel backed up the assault with artillery fire.
No casualties were reported in the incursion, launched in southern Gaza. The area's normally bustling streets were eerily deserted, with people taking refuge inside their homes. Dozens of people living near the airport, which Israeli troops took over, fled to nearby Rafah.
