An anti-Hamas militia claimed responsibility on Monday for killing a senior Hamas police officer in southern Gaza.

Hussam al-Astal, the leader of an anti-Hamas group based in an area under Israeli control east of Khan Younis, claimed responsibility for the killing of Lt. Col. Mahmoud al-Astal in a video he posted on his Facebook page. The last name he shares with the dead man, al-Astal, is common in that part of Gaza.

“We announce today the assassination of the head of investigations in Khan Younis,” the head of the group said in a video message posted to his Facebook page. He threatened to keep targeting Hamas officials and pointed to guns and ammunition that he said are spoils of his militia’s battles.

Pointing to a faint red stain on a semi-automatic rifle, he says, “This is blood of the Hamas dogs and pigs.”

“To those who work with Hamas, your destiny is to be killed. Death is coming to you,” he adds, dressed in a black military-style uniform and clutching an assault rifle.

The video claim came just a few hours after Hamas’s interior ministry announced that the police officer in question had been killed in a drive-by shooting in Mawasi, near Khan Younis, with shots fired from a car occupied by “agents of the Israeli occupation.”

Hamas said that Mahmoud al-Astal, 40, was the Khan Younis police investigations chief. The interior ministry claimed, without providing evidence, that an initial investigation indicated that his killers, who had not........

© The Times of Israel