The Islamist Hamas organization, which controls the Palestinian enclave, announced that it has apprehended the assassin of one of its most senior commanders, Mazen Fuqaha, who was shot in to death near his Gaza residence. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s newly elected supreme leader declared that his security services arrested the person responsible who confessed to carrying out the assassination on Israel’s orders.
“I want to announce to the Palestinian people and to the Arab and Muslim nation that the direct killer and criminal who executed this crime and executed the orders of the Zionist security services is arrested by the (Hamas) security services. He confessed clearly and in details about his crime,” said Haniyeh.
Israel’s Shin Bet security services, which carries out covert operations against Palestinian militants, did not respond immediately to a request for a comment on Haniyeh’s allegations, but in an interview Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman gave to Israeli media right after the killing of the Hamas militant, he attributed the death to an internal power dispute in the Islamist organization, and that the internationally recognized terror group accused Israel for the assassination to conceal its distress.