Sudan attack updateHamas operative killed in Sudan successor of operative assassinated in Dubai
One of the victims of the Israeli strike on two Hamas operatives in Sudan was the successor to the Hamas operatives killed by Israeli agents in Dubai last year; both operatives were in charge of the Iranian-Hamas arms smuggling connection; information emerged that Israel was particularly keen to disrupt the Iranian-Hamas connection after learning that the anti-Gaddafi rebels sold Iran hundreds of nerve and mustard gas munitions from abandoned Libyan military bases; Iran bought the munitions on behalf of Hamas and Hezbollah
It is not very likely that insurance companies stand in line to offer life insurance policies to Hamas operatives. The Jerusalem Post, quoting the Palestinian news source Ma’an, reported that one of the men killed in the recent attack on a car in Port Sudan, Sudan, was senior Hamas official Abdul Latif Al-Shaqr. The source added that the other man killed in the attack was a friend of Shaqr’s.
According to the Ma’an, Shaqr was the successor of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, the Hamas official who was assassinated by Israeli agent in his hotel room in Dubai last year.
Private sources in Hamas have denied the claim that Shaqr was killed in the attack, Ma’an reported, and said that Shaqr is alive and well.
Shaqr, whose family live in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, has been previously accused by Israel of smuggling weapons to Hamas in Gaza, Ma’an reported, and of inheriting Mabhouh’s position after he was killed.
Although there has been no official response to the strike from Jerusalem, Ynet reports that a senior military source in Israel told TIME Magazine Wednesday that Israel was indeed behind the attack, adding that Israel operated in Sudan before. In January 2009, an arms-smuggling convey was hit and demolished in the country in a strike also attributed to Israel. “It’s not our first time there [Sudan],” the Israeli official told TIME.
Debka reports that the car carrying the two Hamas operatives was not destroyed by a missile fired from a drone, but rather by a surfaced missiles launched by a command unit. The unit was ferried to – and lifted from — the point of engagement by a helicopter which took off from a ship docked off the coast of Sudan.
