"ACTIVISTS"

Agence France Presse seems to have decided that “activist” is a perfectly fine word to apply to mass murderers and terrorists:

Islamic Jihad activist killed in West Bank.
JENIN, West Bank (AFP) - Israeli soldiers killed a leading member of the armed wing of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad in the north of the West Bank. The dead man was Mahmud Hammad, 28, Palestinian security sources said Friday. He was shot dead by troops who raided a house where he was hiding in the village of Raba, close to the town of Jenin.

The soldiers, who arrived in twenty jeeps, opened fire in his direction as he was giving himself up, the Palestinian security sources said. The owner of the house in which Hammad had taken refuge said the militant had first been wounded by Israeli fire as he was trying to flee the scene, and then killed.

“He tried to escape. They opened fire at him in front of the house and wounded him. Once they got confirmation he was the man they were after, they finished him off,” Suleiman Qasrawi told AFP. An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the death, adding that soldiers who were surrounding a house “opened fire on a suspect who was fleeing, armed with a pistol,” the spokesman said. The spokesman said Hammad was wanted by the army for his involvement in anti-Israeli attacks on the West Bank and suicide blasts in Israel.

Israel arrests 12 Palestinian activists, including local Hamas leader.
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Twelve wanted Palestinian activists, including a local leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, were arrested by the Israeli army overnight in the West Bank.
The local Hamas leader, Rami Abdelatif Mohammad Tayah, 26, was arrested in the northern town of Tulkarem along with six other activists. He has been wanted by the Israeli army since 2002 after being accused of links to a suicide attack in March that year at an Israeli hotel in Netanya which killed 30 people.