A Hamas guard who killed an Israeli hostage on Monday acted “in revenge” against instructions after he got news that his two children were killed in an Israeli air strike, the spokesman for the group’s armed wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, said on Thursday. The incident doesn’t represent the group’s ethics, added Abu Ubaida in a post on Telegram, Reuters has reported.
His statement came after he revealed on Monday that one Israeli male hostage was killed by his guard and two women captives were seriously wounded in two separate incidents in Gaza.
This was the first time that Al-Qassam had said that a guard had killed a hostage. The group has often attributed previous killings of hostages to Israeli bombardments.
Abu Ubaida blamed the incident on Israeli “massacres” of Palestinians. “The enemy government [Israel] bears full responsibility for these massacres and the resulting reactions that affect the lives of Zionist prisoners,” he said.
In a message on the group’s official Telegram channel, Al-Qassam wrote today: “Your brutality is an imminent danger to your prisoners.”
The Israeli occupation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, after Hamas’s initial announcement of the incident, the Israeli military said it could not immediately corroborate or refute the group’s report.
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