 Three masked men shot and killed a Hamas leader as he left a mosque in the West Bank on Wednesday, witnesses said, a day after a rival Palestinian faction threatened to kill senior Hamas members.
Witnesses said the gunmen jumped out of a passing vehicle and shot Mohammed Odeh, 37, as he left the mosque after dawn prayers in Hableh, a village near the town of Qalqilya, and then sped off, the witnesses said.
They said the vehicle had Israeli license plates but gave no other details. Vehicles with such plates are not uncommon in some major Palestinian cities in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military denied involvement in the shooting in the village, which lies northwest of the main West Bank city of Ramallah. "We were not involved in any such incident near Qalqilya," an army spokesman said.
| "But we aren't too upset about the result," he added. |
Odeh, described as a local leader of Hamas, died on the way to hospital, ambulance workers said.
| Almost reads like the Crossfire Gazette©. |
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