A senior Hamas leader survived an Israeli assassination attempt yesterday but at least five other Palestinians were killed in the night-time explosion that tore through his Gaza home.

Hamas gunmen said a missile fired by an Israeli drone hit the residence of Ahmed al-Jabari, a top commander in the militant Islamic group’s armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades. Doctors said he suffered leg wounds.

“In an Israeli security forces operation in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israel Defence Forces targeted a senior Hamas terrorist,” the army said in a terse statement.

The army, which killed Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin in March and his successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a month later in air strikes, did not say how the latest attack was carried out. Residents said they saw no aircraft at the time of the blast.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to pull Israeli settlers and soldiers out of the Gaza Strip by the end of next year and Israeli forces and Palestinian militants have been bent on scoring “victory” in the run-up to the withdrawal.

Jabari, in his 40s, spent 13 years in Israeli prisons before being released in 1995 under interim peace deals. Hamas, dedicated to Israel’s destruction, has carried out dozens of suicide attacks during a nearly four-year-old Palestinian uprising.

On the Israeli political front Sharon, facing a mutiny in his right-wing Likud party over his plan to “disengage” from the Palestinians in Gaza, approved 1,000 more Israeli settler homes in the West Bank in a move that drew a cautious US response.

Likud holds a snap convention on Wednesday at which party nationalists hope to vote down his proposed alliance with the dovish Labour party led by Shimon Peres, a fervent proponent of withdrawal.

Sharon’s aides said he would pursue his Gaza plan with a “unity” coalition whatever the result of the non-binding Likud vote.

<B>Nidal al-Mughrabi</B>