The Palestinian Authority placed the founder and spiritual mentor of the Islamic militant group Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest in Gaza City on Monday, a Palestinian security official said.
The move came amid redoubled Israeli and international pressure on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to crack down on militants after two suicide bombings in Jerusalem and a gun attack on a Jewish settlement left 31 Israelis dead last week.
"It was decided, starting from tonight, to impose house arrest on Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to safeguard the ultimate national interests of the Palestinian people," the official told Reuters.
"The decision was issued from high up, from President Yasser Arafat," he said.
Abdel-Hamid Yassin, son of the wheelchair-bound cleric, said the family had not been notified in advance of the decision and that Palestinian Authority security service units had taken up two positions within 200 yards of their home.
The last time Yassin was placed under house arrest, in December, a Hamas supporter was killed in the ensuing clashes with Palestinian police in Gaza City. That arrest order was lifted after Yassin agreed he would not make media appearances and that he send his armed bodyguards away from his home.
A Palestinian security source said on Sunday that security forces had arrested about a dozen, mostly field-level, Hamas activists in the Gaza Strip.
(China Daily June 24, 2002)
