Some European nations are pushing to send teams to Congo to help secure humanitarian aid until more U.N. peacekeepers can be deployed, French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said Wednesday.

France, Belgium and Sweden are considering how to give Congo added help by arriving ahead of the Security Council's expected addition of 3,100 troops to augment its beleaguered peacekeeping mission, he said.

The teams presumably would be armed but there was no immediate word on that as the nations were still discussing the proposal and details haven't been worked out. But Ripert stressed that they would not be linked to the EU's rapid reaction military force.

He said they could possibly help secure areas around the provincial capital of Goma and roads needed to distribute food and other humanitarian aid.

In the past month, as rebel forces swept toward Goma, the U.N. held positions but could not protect all the civilians caught up in the fighting. That led to calls for reinforcing - reconfiguring the U.N.'s peacekeeping contingent.

Ripert said that once the council approves the additional peacekeeping troops "it will then be easier for the European Union to try to see what they can do on the purely humanitarian side," said Ripert, whose nation holds the EU presidency.

But getting more troops on the group could take months. Congo currently has the world's largest U.N. peacekeeping mission, with 17,000 troops.

A bomb exploded in a car carrying one of Israel's top mafia kingpins on Monday, killing him and threatening to unleash an all-out war in Israel's increasingly violent underworld.

Israeli police officials identified the dead man as Yaakov Alperon - known informally as "Don Alperon" - the head of one of the country's most powerful crime families. The bloodied body was wearing the same polo shirt Alperon was seen sporting earlier in the day at a Tel Aviv courthouse.

Medics said three bystanders were also lightly wounded in the explosion, including a 13-year-old boy.

Israelis are accustomed to violence with their Palestinian neighbors but have traditionally felt relatively safe from violent crime. In recent years, however, mob wars also have plagued Israeli towns and cities.

Rival underworld gangs have waged bloody battles for control of gambling and protection rackets, including one involving bottle recycling.

They target each other with bullets, bombs and even anti-tank missiles in violence that has killed dozens of gangsters and at least eight bystanders in the last three years. Monday's noontime attack was by far the most high-profile to date.

The explosion came as Alperon returned from a courthouse where his son, Dror, was facing extortion charges.

The brazen, midday assassination quickly dominated the news, pushing Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza and a summit between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders off the airwaves. TV stations broke into their scheduled programming.

Police officials identified the victim as Alperon, speaking on condition of anonymity because the identification had not been officially made public. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld would say only that he was a "well known" underworld figure.

Alperon, Israel's most famous criminal, had also become something of a cultural icon. He and his brothers have given frequent TV interviews and were parodied on comedy shows. His immediate family even took part in a reality TV show.

Alperon had many enemies, including convicted drug lord Zeev Rosenstein - who himself has survived at least seven assassination attempts - and the rival Abutbul and Abarjil families, with whom the Alperons battled over a lucrative bottle recycling racket.

Bottle recycling adds up to a $5 million-a-year industry, according to estimates by police and environmental groups. Police say criminals sell restaurants protection in exchange for empties, which leave no paper trail and offer crime families a relatively legitimate source of income.

Organized crime, long overshadowed by the Arab-Israeli conflict, has become such a part of everyday life that Israel has its own "Sopranos"-style TV series, "The Arbitrator," in which even synagogues are no refuge from hit men.

In the past, rival families would settle their scores quietly. But as the pot gets richer they are getting bolder, taking more risks and posing a greater threat to public safety. Most crime bosses now travel with bodyguards in armored vehicles.

Last May, Yaakov Alperon's older brother, Nissim, survived the ninth assassination attempt against him. A three-man hit team dispatched to get him was intercepted by police, and in the ensuing gunbattle a policeman was seriously wounded and one of the gunman was killed.

Yossi Sedbon, a former Tel Aviv police chief, told Army Radio that further bloodshed was likely. "This battle between gangs of criminals will continue and the family will make great efforts to avenge his death," he said.

A young gunman arrested this week turns out to be the head of the Basque separatist group ETA - the first member of an uncompromising and ultra-violent new generation to lead the organization, Spanish officials said Wednesday.

Police said they were preparing for retaliation from ETA over the arrest of 35-year-old Mikel de Garikoitz Aspiazu, whose alias is Txeroki, or Cherokee in Basque.

Spanish authorities previously said Aspiazu was in charge of ETA's commando units, which carry out attacks. But Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said in an interview with Cadena Ser radio that Aspiazu was actually ETA's top leader, in charge of overall strategy. He did not say how or when authorities had discovered that he held that role.

Spanish officials have described Aspiazu as the most-wanted member of ETA and a potent symbol of a new generation of ETA members: young and extremely violent, disinclined to peace negotiations and with little to no ideological grounding - unlike founders and older members of a group that ostensibly espouses Marxism.

ETA has killed more than 800 people since the late 1960s in its battle to create an independent homeland in northern Spain and southwest France for Basques, a people with their own language and culture. The most radical Basque separatists say they suffer repression at the hands of the Spanish government

ETA declared what it called a permanent cease-fire in March 2006 and began peace talks with the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. But the negotiations went nowhere and ETA detonated a car bomb at Madrid's Barajas airport in December 2006, killing two people.

Aspiazu is believed to have been opposed to the truce from the outset, and he is described as having given the order to end it with the airport bombing.

Police arrested Aspiazu on Monday in the French town of Cauterets, near the border with Spain, along with Leire Lopez, a woman who is also a suspected ETA member. They were asleep in an apartment when Spanish and French police burst in. The pair were found in possession of two pistols and 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of hash.

He has been transferred to Paris where he is being held in police custody. French authorities have not said if he has been appointed a defense lawyer.

The Interior Ministry mug shot of Aspiazu shows a grim-faced man with stubble, an earring and close-cut hair, except for curly strands in the back. It is not clear when the photo was taken but it is probably several years old.

He rose to the top position after the arrest of Francisco Javier Lopez Pena, then believed to be ETA's boss, in May near Bordeaux, France, Perez Rubalcaba said.

"Txeroki ended up in charge of everything - the political apparatus, the so-called military apparatus. The one who ordered killings was Txeroki," he said.

Spanish and French officials say Aspiazu is a top suspect in the shooting of two Spanish civil guards in December in the French resort town of Capbreton.

Spanish security forces are on maximum alert because ETA will probably try to attack and show it is not in disarray, the minister said.

"We have to be prepared. One of these days ETA will try to show it is not weak, that even though Txeroki has been arrested, it can still act," Perez Rubalcaba said.

Perez Rubalcaba described Aspiazu as "a legend within the group."

His arrest is clearly a major coup but not a definitive one because ETA leaders have fallen before, only to see the group just designate another, the minister said. Spanish officials often describe ETA as a hydra.

An aid group on Sunday sent the first medical supplies to a ravaged eastern Congo since fighting ended there, as officials in the provincial capital of Goma clamped down on the illegal sale of food aid in the city's bustling markets.

Rebels led by Laurent Nkunda captured the two towns from the government 10 days ago in a swath of territory that allowed him to link up positions won in the latest round of a long-simmering rebellion that erupted in August. The fighting has uprooted some 250,000 people, who have taken shelter in camps or anywhere they can get away from the violence. Getting supplies to them has been very difficult.

Goma mayor Roger Rashiy said local police spotted sacks of maize flour bearing the World Food Program logo in the local market, which led to the seizure of some 40 tons of food aid and the arrest of several vendors. Authorities said the food will be returned to aid agencies to be distributed.

"It's the first time I've seen this," Rashiy said.

Officials of the U.N. agency said the food on sale comprises about one percent of the 3,500 metric tons of food aid they have given to the hundreds of thousands of refugees living in and around camps in Congo's North Kivu province.

"We are aware that a small portion of our food may be sold in the market," said agency spokeswoman Caroline Hurford. "This happens in all emergencies, and it's largely because the beneficiaries like to diversify their diet. They're tired of eating the same thing, which is understandable."

North of Goma, the distribution of US$300,000 worth of medical aid resumed for 40,000 people trapped in rebel-held land after last week's territory grab by the rebels.

London-based medical aid group Merlin took a truckload of basic medication to 20 clinics around the towns of Kanyabayonga and Kirumba, more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Goma, for the first time since they were captured during a rebel advance.

"We're really pleased that we've gotten here," said Merlin spokeswoman Louise Orton. "We haven't been here for a week and a half. We know the health centers really need the drugs."

Local human rights groups accuse Laurent Nkunda's rebel forces of raping and murdering civilians and abducting young men to fight against the government - accusations he denies.

Nkunda says he is protecting Congo's minorities, especially ethnic Tutsis he says are threatened by Hutu militias from Rwanda, many of whom fled to Congo's forests after participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Critics accuse Nkunda of exploiting the instability to gain power, and say his attacks have increased resentment against Tutsis.

The United Nations has 17,000 peacekeepers in the Central African nation and has approved the deployment of a further 3,100 but the government, whose ill-disciplined and badly trained forces have frequently fled the fighting, is refusing to negotiate with the rebels.

On Sunday, hundreds of angry Congolese soldiers dragged 25 men who they claimed were rebels from a U.N. convoy of canvas-covered trucks driven by Indian peacekeepers. The men said they were government policemen from rebel-held areas. A few wore faded navy blue uniforms, with "police" embroidered on the pocket.

The U.N. troops driving the trucks did not intervene as the men's hands were bound behind them with string and they were driven away from the checkpoint near Kibate, a refugee camp four miles (six kilometers) north of Goma.

A U.N. spokesman did not have any immediate comment on the incident and U.N. soldiers on the scene would not talk to The Associated Press. It was not clear why the men were on the convoy.

In a separate incident, a Ugandan army officer said his country had on Saturday handed back 35 Congolese policemen who had fled the fighting because they had carried their weapons into Uganda.