by Nasser Abu Bakr
JENIN, West Bank, Sept 13 (AFP) - Three Palestinian militants were killed Monday in an Israeli helicopter strike on a car in the flashpoint northern West Bank town of Jenin, medical and security sources said.
The three were all members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs` Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat`s Fatah movement, and included the right-hand man of one of the most wanted of all militants in the West Bank.
Mahmud Khalifa, 28, the chief lieutenant of local Brigades leader Zakaria Zubeidi, was killed instantly alongside 28-year-old Amjad Husni and Yamen Abu al-Hassan, 25, when a missile slammed into their vehicle in the centre of the town.
There was no immediate comment on the strike from the Israeli military.
Zubeidi immediately vowed to carry out revenge attacks for the killing of the three men.
"This attack will not pass in silence and our response will be in Tel Aviv in the next 24 hours," he told AFP.
Zubeidi, who has survived several assassination attempts, said he did not believe that he was the target of the air strike, noting that it was the second time in barely a fortnight that his top aide had been in Israeli sights.
Khalifa and Husni had escaped an Israeli air strike in the northern West Bank town on August 30. The missile had then missed their vehicle and hit a house, leaving a nine-year-old girl in need of hospital treatment.
Jenin is both the birthplace and stronghold of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs which has been behind a series of deadly anti-Israeli attacks since the start of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in late September 2000.
It was the first Israeli air strike on Palestinian militants since combat aircraft killed 15 members of the Islamist movement Hamas while they undergoing military training on a football pitch in the eastern Gaza Strip.
The 15th victim of the football pitch strike, 24-year-old Rawad Al-Soweirki, died of his injuries earlier on Monday, medical sources said.
Israeli officials had vowed in the aftermath of the Gaza attack, which came six days after a deadly double suicide bombing in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva, that they would continue targeting militant leaders.
The latest deaths brought the overall toll since the start of the intifada to 4,307, including 3,293 Palestinians and 943 Israelis, according to an AFP count.