Arafat adviser reported shot, killed in Gaza

GAZA CITY -- Gunmen shot dead a prominent adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Gaza City today, witnesses and medics said.

They said unknown assailants gunned down Khalil al-Zebin, 59, a veteran journalist who ran a Palestinian Authority-funded magazine and advised Arafat on human rights and media issues, outside his office in Palestinian-ruled Gaza.

Zebin was shot several times shortly after midnight and died soon after arriving at Gaza's Shifa Hospital, medics said.

Police said they were investigating but no arrests had been made.

Zebin was a longtime Arafat loyalist whose monthly magazine focused on the rights of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Palestinian journalists have recently staged protests demanding that the Palestinian Authority investigate a recent series of attacks against them in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We strongly condemn the assassination of veteran journalist Khalil al-Zebin and urge the Palestinian Authority to intervene immediately to find the perpetrators," said Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Journalists Union.

Palestinians are grappling with a breakdown in law and order accelerated by frequent Israeli army raids that Israel says are intended to preempt Palestinian militant attacks but which have also crippled Palestinian security services.

Armed gangs, often elements of militant groups fighting Israel in an uprising and sometimes linked to security organs themselves, have been behind a sharp rise in robbery, extortion, abductions, and murder in the cities of Gaza and the West Bank.