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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Hamas in alliance with Al Qaeda: Abbas |
| 2008-02-28 |
| Hamas has helped Al Qaeda militants enter the Islamist-controlled Gaza Strip and formed an alliance with them, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas was quoted as saying on Wednesday. “Al Qaeda is present in Gaza and I’m convinced that they (Hamas) are their allies,” Abbas said in an interview with the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat. “I can say without doubt that Al Qaeda is present in the Palestinian territories and that this presence - especially in Gaza - is facilitated by Hamas,” he said. Hamas rejects: Hamas rejected the claim. “There is no truth in these allegations,” spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP, adding that Abbas “is seeking to mobilise international opinion against Hamas”. Israel has claimed in the past that Al Qaeda was present in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas militants in June routed forces loyal to Abbas’s secular Fatah faction. In January, militants from a hitherto unknown group claiming links to Al Qaeda ransacked a private school in the Gaza Strip. A statement signed by the “Army of Believers, Al Qaeda in Palestine Organisation” was left behind at the American International School after the attack. Five militants killed: Five Hamas militants were killed in an Israeli air strike on a minibus in the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as the United Nations called on all sides to find ways to end the violence. The raid on the southern town of Khan Yunis, which also wounded one person, was followed by a second strike on the same site that left three people injured, medical sources told AFP. An army spokeswoman confirmed that the military had “carried out strikes on vehicles in Khan Yunis and identified hitting them.” Another militant from the armed wing of the radical Islamic Jihad movement was killed overnight in a similar air strike in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said. In the West Bank, undercover Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian militant during an arrest raid in the town of Nablus, security and medical sources said. They entered Nablus in a private vehicle and opened fire at four members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a group loosely linked to Abbas’s secular Fatah movement. They then nabbed two of the militants who had been wounded by the gunfire. The deaths brought to around 205 the number of people killed since Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks in November, most of them militants, according to an AFP count. |
| Posted by:Fred |