RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israeli helicopters fired two rockets at the office of a senior PLO leader Monday, killing him in what Israel said was retaliation for several bombings. Palestinians warned the attack could unleash "all-out war."
Mustafa Zibri, 63, widely known as Abu Ali Mustafa, was the highest-ranking Palestinian official killed in a targeted Israeli attack in 11 months of fighting.
Zibri, who led the second-largest PLO faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was also the most senior PLO figure to be killed since Israeli commandos shot and killed PLO military chief Khalil Al-Wazir in his Tunis home in 1988.
The Palestinian Authority said in a statement that Israel "has opened the gates to an all-out war" and accused it of escalating violence that claimed the lives of seven Israelis and four Palestinians over the weekend. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's aides held the United States indirectly responsible for the killing of Zibri.
At the time of the helicopter attack, Zibri was in his second-floor Ramallah apartment, which doubled as PFLP headquarters. Zibri's body was torn apart in the attack, doctors said. The rockets blew out two corner windows, and smoke blackened the facade.
One of Zibri's deputies, Abdel Rahim Malouh, was lightly hurt by shrapnel.
Israeli Cabinet Minister Ephraim Sneh said Zibri was involved in seven bomb attacks in the past six months, was planning more bombings and was a "legitimate and necessary target." The army said no one was killed in those bomb attacks.
Arafat announced a three-day mourning period. Upon hearing the news of Zibri's death, a shaken Arafat withdrew to his office for about half an hour, his aides said.
Thousands of angry Palestinians poured into the streets of West Bank towns, vowing revenge. In Arabe, Zibri's home village in the northern West Bank, about 5,000 people marched, led by gunmen firing in the air.
Zibri's widow, Khitam, 55, who was in Amman, Jordan, cried when receiving the news, then shouted: "His blood will not go wasted."
Nabil Aburdeneh, an Arafat adviser, accused President Bush of a pro-Israeli bias that, Aburdeneh said, encouraged Israel to carry out the killing.
"This policy of assassinations which is being conducted with a green light from the United States, will push the area into a new cycle of violence and danger," Aburdeneh said.
The United States has condemned pinpointed killings. However, Bush has been sharply critical of Arafat, saying he could do more to rein in militants.
More than 50 Palestinians have been killed in pinpointed Israeli attacks in the last 11 months, most of them militants suspected of involvement in attacks on Israelis. Some of those killed were bystanders, including two children.
Zibri returned to the West Bank from exile in 1999, and was described as one of five top figures in the PLO. He became leader of the PFLP last year, taking over from the group's founder, George Habash, who lives in Damascus, Syria.
The PFLP opposes peace talks with Israel as ineffective but does not advocate establishing a Palestinian state in Israel's place, as Islamic militants do.
Sneh, who serves as transport minister and is a retired general, said that Zibri turned the PFLP "back into what it was in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, an active and deadly terrorist organization." Recent bombings carried out by the PFLP "were all his work," Sneh told Israel army radio.
Earlier Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he would press to arrange truce talks with Arafat, despite the violent weekend.
However, Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said such contacts had been called off. "Can anybody think of negotiations now with these assassins and killers in the Israeli government?"
Speaking in Austria Monday, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the violent weekend meant there is more need for the two sides to talk, not less.
"When the killings are going on is when you need to talk," Annan said. "I am worried that if we don't contain the crisis, it could spread."
The weekend began with two Palestinian militants infiltrating an isolated Israeli army base in the Gaza Strip before dawn Saturday, killing three Israeli soldiers and wounding seven before being shot to death.
On Sunday evening, an Israeli was shot and killed as he made a business transaction with a Palestinian at the edge of the West Bank, near the Palestinian town of Tulkarem.