Israel makes a martyr of Yassin

Welcome to the Wrap, Guardian Unlimited's round-up of the best of the day's papers.

PALESTINIANS VOW REVENGE

In what the FT describes as an "extremely stupid action", Israeli forces killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, as he was pushed in his wheelchair outside his local mosque yesterday.

Yassin died instantly, according to the Independent. "The side of his head and face had been blown off, and he was lying on the road with the wheelchair about a metre away from him," an eyewitness tells the paper. At least six other people, some of them his bodyguards, were also killed in the missile attack.

Assassination? Extra-judicial killing? No one doubts that Yassin directed terrorist attacks: although a virtually blind paraplegic with a "deceptively saintly appearance" (the Independent), he approved numerous suicide bombings. "Assistants ... held sheets of paper inches in front of his face for him to peruse," writes the Times' Stephen Farrell, who has met him. "A nod, or a shake of the head, and policy was decided."

But one thing is clear: the Palestinian cause has gained another martyr. "The military had tried and failed to kill Sheikh Yassin in September," reports Chris McGreal in the Guardian. "But when it came, many Gazans saw the attack as a cowardly execution of a frail old man in a wheelchair who did not attempt to hide."

"Why bring fire on yourself?" a Palestinian professor asks McGreal. "I want every Israeli to ask themselves that question. They are very stupid. I really don't understand them."

Even the Telegraph - a steadfast supporter of Israel - is bemused. "To kill Yassin already looks like a serious mistake, less for moral than for strategic reasons," the paper says. "By granting Yassin the martyrdom he craved, the Israelis have provided a motive for new suicide attacks."

Only the Sun wholeheartedly approves of Yassin's assassination. "Being 'spiritual leader' of Hamas is not like being the Archbishop of Canterbury," says the paper, in what is essentially a slightly dumbed-down version of the editorial in its sister paper, the Times. "Ahmed Yassin was a Godfather of Terror, the man who founded the Palestinian killing machine ... One more terrorist mastermind is dead."

What was the intention of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon? The papers supply a couple of possible motives, with the Telegraph suggesting that the assassination was a token show of strength before Israel's withdrawal from parts of Gaza.

"The Israeli security elite would also claim that picking off the leaders of Hamas will weaken it and thus allow saner heads loyal to Yasser Arafat ... to take over security ... when the Israelis pull out," suggests the paper's foreign editor. The Times confirms that Mr Sharon regards Hamas as a "top-down" rather than a "bottom-up" organisation.

All the more appallingly ironic, then, that most of the papers ran a picture of two British soldiers engulfed by flames in Basra yesterday. Iraqis, some of whom were chanting Yassin's name, had lobbed petrol bombs at them. Yassin, the Palestinian professor tells McGreal, will kill more Israelis dead than he did alive.

* The call for bloody revenge
* "He'll kill more in death..."
* Times: Sharon has to show that he has a political strategy
* Telegraph: Leader
* Telegraph: A stupid decision
* Sun: Our Boys burn
* Sun: Proper target

ENGLAND CLOSE TO VICTORY IN WINDIES

Depending on which paper you favour, the Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri's job is either doomed (the Sun) or safe (the Telegraph). In the absence of reliable rumour, the papers return to the second Test in Trinidad, where England "are within 28 runs of retaining the Wisden Trophy for the first time in 35 years," according to an excited Telegraph.

Bad light stopped play, but not before Simon Jones had taken five wickets. "The Glamorgan paceman deserves praise," says the paper, "though it must be tempered after he gave two of his early victims send-offs vulgar enough to be noticed by the match referee."

* Jones leads England's charge
* Sun: Ranieri: I'm off

FISHERMEN PLOT MURDER OF RIVAL

Wrap readers in possession of a shotgun and living within a reasonable distance from Essex should turn to the front page of the Times, because group of Essex fishermen are looking for a mercenary.

The intended target for the contract killing is a 600lb bull seal who has been plundering nets off Mersea Island. Naturally, conservationists are appalled.

"[Sammy] heads a breeding colony that has lived around the island for the past five years," reports the paper. "They say that if [he] is shot, his harme of up to six females and their young will go elsewhere."

Finally, special congratulations to the Wrap's colleague Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, whose engagement to Yulia Khabiboullina is announced today in the Guardian Diary.

* Times: OK Sammy, come out with your flippers up
* Guardian Diary

COMING UP ON GUARDIAN UNLIMITED TODAY

>>> Latest news from the Middle East

>>> The remains of Rachel Whitear were being exhumed today in a new inquiry into her death.

* "Has HG Wells recently joined your team?" enquired a reader who, like a few hundred other subscribers, received a copy of the Wrap of March 31 2003 yesterday afternoon. No - it was just a technical error. Apologies for the unsolicited war dispatch.