Palestinian court sentences 2 Israeli spies to death

11/30/2004 3:33:00 PM GMT

A Palestinian court sentenced two Palestinians, father and son, to death after they were found guilty of collaborating with Israeli intelligence officials, security sources said on Tuesday.

Mohammad Abu Qeinas, 51, and his son Rami, in his 20s, were convicted on Monday of providing information to Israel's secret service before a failed assassination attempt on Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz al Rantissi in 2003, the sources said.

The two Gaza residents were captured by Palestinian security forces in July. Both confessed that they passed information on the location of Rantisi.

Rantissi, who led the Hamas movement in Gaza after the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March, was assassinated in May 2003 in an Israeli air strike.

The death sentences ruled by the Gaza City criminal court must be approved by the Palestinian Authority president before they can be implemented.

Yasser Arafat died on Nov. 11 without approving death sentences imposed on Palestinians. A new president is expected to be elected on Jan. 9.

Only three of the many convicted spies who were sentenced to death by Palestinian courts over the past decade have actually been killed.

Hamas vowed after Rantissi's assassination that it would launch a campaign to execute collaborators who help the Jewish state. In August, Hamas fighters killed an accused spy in his Gaza prison cell.

Israeli forces killed 53 Palestinians in one month

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Health Authority reported on Tuesday that Israeli occupation forces killed 53 Palestinians and wounded 314 others in the Gaza strip and the West Bank within a month.

It said that the statistics, which covered the period between Oct. 28 and Nov. 27, indicated that "three women and 11 youth with ages ranging between 7 and 17 years were among the dead."

It also showed that the wounded included 16 women and 39 children who were treated in Gaza hospitals during the same period.

"The Israeli forces committed several attacks on hospitals and medical centers in addition to obstructing rescue teams and ambulances from evacuating the casualties to hospitals," the health authority said.