Israel has for the first time admitted assassinating the deputy of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a 1988 seaborne raid in Tunisia.

The operation was planned by the Mossad spy agency and carried out by the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit, a report published in Israel's top-selling Yediot Aharonot on Thursday said.

Israel has long been suspected of assassinating Khalil al-Wazir, who was better known as Abu Jihad. But only now has the country's military censor cleared the Yediot to publish the information, including an interview with the commando who killed him, at least 12 years after the newspaper obtained the information.

The operation was commanded by Nahum Lev who, in an interview before his death in 2000, spoke frankly about his role in the operation although it was never published.

"Abu Jihad was involved in horrible acts against civilians ... I shot him without hesitation," the commando told Yediot.

A long-time friend and deputy to Arafat who headed the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Abu Jihad had played a leading role in directing the 1987-1994 intifada uprising against the Israeli occupation.

He was also blamed for a series of deadly attacks against Israelis before the uprising, including a 1978 attack on a bus that killed 38 Israelis.

'State of Israel guilty'

"For us, it was the state of Israel which assassinated Abu Jihad," said Mahmud al-Alul, a former assistant to the PLO deputy, and now a senior official in the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/11/2012111191447383639.html