Hamas claimed yesterday that Israeli agents assassinated one of the Palestinian militant group’s veteran operatives in a killing allegedly carried out last week in the Gulf city of Dubai and vowed to retaliate.
The group blamed Israel for the slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh but offered no evidence of foul play or Israeli involvement in the man’s death. Israel’s government had no immediate comment.
Al-Mabhouh’s brother, Fayed, said he was killed by electric shock after an electrical appliance was held to his head, blaming Israeli agents.
“The first results of a joint investigation by Hamas and the [United Arab] Emirates show he was killed by an electrical appliance that was held to his head,” Fayed said yesterday.
“Material was sent to a Paris laboratory which confirmed he was killed by electric shock.”
He charged that Israel’s Mossad overseas intelligence agency was behind the killing believed to have been conducted by two people, but did not say whether there was any evidence to back this up.
The Hamas official had already been targeted in the past, his brother said, adding that several months ago he was taken in a coma to a hospital in Damascus where doctors later told him he had been poisoned.
The Hamas operative was killed on Jan. 20, according to an announcement on a Hamas Web site. The statement gave no details about his death or any explanation for the delay in making it public.
“We in Hamas hold the Zionist enemy responsible for the criminal assassination of our brother, and we pledge to God and to the blood of the martyrs and to our people to continue his path of jihad and martyrdom,” read the statement on Hamas’ Palestinian Information Center Web site.
The group pledged to “retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate time and place.”
Al-Mabhouh was due to be buried yesterday at the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, near Damascus, the statement said.
The Hamas statement identified al-Mabhouh as one of the founders of Hamas’ military organization, which has been responsible for hundreds of deadly attacks and suicide bombings targeting Israelis since the 1980s.
It said he was involved in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 and that he was still playing a “continuous role in supporting his brothers in the resistance inside the occupied homeland” at the time of his death.
In Dubai, officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
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