Israel assassinates Shalit-deal prisoner in Gaza, Hamas says
March 25, 2017 10:33 A.M.
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GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The Hamas movement announced Friday night that former prisoner 35-year-old Mazen Fuqahaa was assassinated by unidentified assailants in southern Gaza City, accusing Israel of carrying out the targeted killing.
Unknown assailants opened fire at Fuqahaa at the entrance to a residence in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in southwestern Gaza City, shooting four bullets into the man’s head before they fled the area, witnesses said.
The assassination was carried out with a gun equipped with a silencer, according to member of Hamas’s politburo Izzat al-Rishq.
Fuqahaa, from the northern occupied West Bank district of Tubas, was released from serving a life sentence in Israeli custody in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoners exchange deal, and then exiled to the besieged Gaza Strip.
According to Israeli media, Fuqahaa was a senior member of the al-Qassam Brigades, and had been sentenced to life in prison for planning a suicide bombing in northern Israel in 2002 that left nine people dead and tens of others wounded.
In a statement, the brigades said that it was “clear and obvious that this crime was arranged by the Zionist enemy,” referring to the state of Israel.
They went on to warn that “this enemy will be the ones who suffer the consequences and take responsibility for this crime,” and that Israel would “regret the day” they began carrying out stealth assassinations against “resistance fighters in Gaza.”
The Hamas movement called the assassination “a cowardly attack by the occupation,” promising that Israel would “pay for its crimes.”
The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also denounced the assassination, saying the killing “must be met with a harsh response by all resistance factions.”
The Islamic Jihad movement said Fuqahaa’s assassination marked the start of “a new offensive” by Israel against Palestinian resistance, and that the resistance had the right to respond and defend themselves.
Spokesperson for Gaza’s Ministry of Interior Iyad al-Buzm said security services had opened an investigation into the details of the incident.