Hamas accuses Israel of killing top commander

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas accused Israel yesterday of assassinating one of its senior military commanders in a Dubai hotel, but Dubai police said the killing was the work of a criminal gang.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, an Israeli target since engineering the capture of Israeli soldiers in the 1980s during a Palestinian uprising, was killed on January 20, a Hamas official said in the Syrian capital Damascus.

The Dubai police said a "criminal gang... was following the movements of the victim before his arrival in the United Arab Emirates".

An official statement said most of the suspects had European passports and left the country after the killing. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal made an impassioned speech at Mr Mabhouh's funeral yesterday at the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk on the edge of Damascus. He described Mr Mabhouh as a "great man" who fought the Israelis for 30 years.

Mr Mabhouh's death lengthens Hamas's list of what it describes as "martyrs", and constitutes another setback for the group in its fight against the Jewish state. Israel has killed dozens of leaders and military figures in Hamas, founded two decades ago as a religious resistance movement against Israeli occupation.

"I cannot reveal the circumstances (of the killing)," said Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas's politburo. He said Mr Mabhouh, 50, was an important member of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, Hamas's military wing.

He said the brigades "will respond (against Israel) in the appropriate time and place". However, Hamas would not let the killing derail efforts to arrange a prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel, which have run into difficulties.

Mr Mabhouh, who was born in the Gaza Strip but had been living in Syria since 1989, was killed a day after he arrived in Dubai. A Hamas source in Gaza said Mr Mabhouh was an active commander "until the moment of his assassination". Another Palestinian source said Mr Mabhouh was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai.

He had barricaded the door of his room with chairs, a standard precaution by a man who believed Israeli intelligence had been after him for 20 years.