Israel will resume its campaign to assassinate Hamas leaders in retaliation for the killing of 16 people in the first suicide bombings in the Jewish state in nearly six months, Israeli security sources said in Jerusalem Wednesday.

A renewed drive against the militant group's leadership after a lull in such attacks could intensify the cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence, further complicating Israeli plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip by the end of next year.

Israel killed Hamas's two top leaders in Gaza missile strikes in March and April, but security sources said such high-level hits had been put on hold in recent months to target lower-level militants firing rockets into southern Israel.

But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his security commanders decided to put Hamas's Gaza-based leadership back in the army's sights after bombers blew up two buses almost simultaneously in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Tuesday.

Israeli bus bomb survivor Nissim Waknin felt wracked by guilt yesterday, saying he was alive only because he gave his seat to a 70-year-old woman minutes before she and 15 others were killed.

"I feel guilty. I cannot forget the sight of that woman. It will stay with me forever," said Waknin.

Top Hamas officials in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh, have gone underground since Israel began tracking and killing members of the group's upper echelons. Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997, is based in Damascus.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian parliament suspended work yesterday to press President Yasser Arafat into ratifying an anti-corruption reform package and get a grip on spiralling unrest and disorder.

"We have decided to cancel sessions from September 7 to October 7 to await the approval of our (reform) resolutions by the executive authority," parliament speaker Rawhi Fattouh said, referring to Arafat and the Palestinian Government.

(China Daily September 2, 2004)