2003: Israeli commandos killed a West Bank commander of the militant group Hamas in a raid that could deal a blow to reformist Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’ battle for political survival. An Israeli soldier was also killed and four soldiers were wounded in the operation in the city of Nablus, which ended when soldiers blew up an apartment building where Mohammad Al Hanbali had been holed up. The spectacle of the seven-storey structure crumbling in a heap of dust was likely to give ammunition to opponents of Abbas’ efforts to promote a US-backed peace plan. The army said naval commandos raided the building to detain Al Hanbali, 27, who opened fire at them from an elevator shaft where he had been hiding.
Other major events on September 5
1839 The First Opium War begins in China.
1905 Treaty of Portsmouth ends Russo-Japanese War.
1972 11 Israeli athletes are killed at the Munich Olympics.
1980 St Gotthard in the Swiss Alps, the world’s longest auto tunnel, opens.
1986 Commandos of the Pakistan Army storm a hijacked Pan Am Jumbo jet, killing 22 people.
1987 Israeli jets blast Palestinian militant bases near Sidon, Lebanon, killing 41 people
1997 Mother Teresa dies of heart attack
2001 Peter Bray, a kayaker, completes solo Atlantic trip.
2005 Mandala Airlines Boeing 737-200 crashes in Indonesia killing 149 people.
2008 Europe’s Rosetta space probe makes a successful flyby of the Steins asteroid 250 million miles from Earth.
2010 Landslide buries a major highway and killed 38 people in Guatemala.
2012 A powerful explosion at fireworks factory in Sivakasi, India, kills at least 52 people.
2016 Death toll from twin bombings near Defence Ministry in Kabul, climbs to 24.
2017 Gauri Lankesh, a fearless Indian journalist shot dead in Bengaluru.
