(2004-04-18) -- Hamas, the Palestinian social services agency, announced today that its recently-appointed leader Abdel Azziz Rantisi died this weekend of natural causes.

Mr. Rantisi apparently perished from the same disease which took the life of his predecessor, Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin less than one month ago.

"The autopsy showed that Abdel Azziz Rantisi died of a virulent, contagious kind of cancer that destroys the mind, and by natural cause-and-effect, the body," said an unnamed Palestinian coroner. "Although you may have read that Rantisi and Yassin died from Israeli missile attacks, that was just the coup de grace. The condition that really killed them is like HIV. You don’t die of HIV, you die from something else because you have AIDS. These men died of missile attacks, but the attacks were caused by the wasting disease that infected their minds and hearts."