On the night of July 23, 2002, an IAF warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on a Gaza apartment building where senior Hamas commander Salah Shahade was sleeping together with his wife and family. The building was situated in a densely populated residential neighborhood. Besides Shehada and his wife and daughter, a dozen more civilians were killed, most of them children. Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon called the operation a success in the war on terror, but political critics pointed out that it was carried out hours after Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin issued a statement offering an end to suicide bombing, and just as the Palestinian Authority was working out a deal with Hamas to end terror attacks. All these developments were undone by the bombing, and the terror wave resumed. There was at least one revenge attack directly related to the Shehade bombing – on July 31 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, killing 7 civilians including 2 Americans.