LONDON, May 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Immediately following an early morning Israeli incursion into the West Bank town of Tulkarem, a senior leader of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas warned Israel Thursday, May 2, of launching new operations "in the coming few weeks or days."

"The resistance is still strong," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Abdel Aziz Al-Rantissi as telling BBC radio in London. "We will hear about operations in the coming few weeks or days."

He also denounced an accord which led to Israeli forces lifting their siege on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah in exchange for handing six Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) activists to Israel under international guard. The six are wanted for killing Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi in October 2001 in retaliation for Israel’s earlier assassination of PFLP leader Abu Ali Mostafa.

Rantissi said that with his release, Arafat had given up "the last kind of sovereignty" and put an end to the Oslo peace process, negotiations and "any hope of an independent state.

"If you are going to say that negotiation is a kind of struggle," he went on, "then Mr. Arafat put an end for that kind of struggle, so now we have just one way, which is military struggle.”

"I think the Palestinians have no other option just to struggle for their liberation," he added.

Rantissi said Israeli right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his government "did nothing except kill civilians" during their deadly West Bank offensive.

"We cannot accept occupation any more," he added.

Meanwhile, an explosion that took place late Wednesday, May 1, at the offices of the British Council in the Gaza Strip, was blamed on the PFLP, BBC’s online news service reported.

The sound of the blast, before midnight, reverberated around the quiet neighborhood of Gaza City where the British Council is based.

There were no injuries reported. The building was empty, and the explosion damaged only an adjunct to the main building, which houses the council cafe.

Resistance fighters, who allegedly claimed to represent the PFLP, told local media they had set off the explosion to serve as a warning to Britain over its involvement in the jailing of their leader, Ahmed Sa'adat.

He and five others were transferred late Wednesday to a jail in Jericho, where they will be guarded by British personnel under a deal supported by the United States and negotiated by British and American diplomats.

Until the deal was struck, they had been held inside Arafat's compound in Ramallah.