Salafist group demands Hamas to release its members

Friday October 02, 2009 23:14 by Saed Bannoura

The Salafist Group, a group thought to be affiliated with the Al Qaida terrorist network, demanded Hamas movement and its internal security to release all of its detained members, including its leaders Sheikh Firas Abu Abdullah, without any preconditions.

Hamas logo - Palestinian flag

In a press release, the group said that Hamas and its security forces are “trading with the blood and money of the nation” and that they brutally killed members of the group and arrested them, especially members of the Tawheed and Jihad.

It added that the previous events in Rafah and the killing of the group leader “prove that Hamas is targeting the Jihadist fighters and eliminating the resistance”.

The group also stated that it will not just forget ‘the betrayal of Hamas, and the crimes against the Mujahidin”.

Last August, the leader Jund Ansar Allah Salafist group, Abdul-Latif Mousa, was killed in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, along with more than sixteen members of the group during clashes with the Hamas police and security forces. Six Hamas policemen, including a leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades, were killed.

The clashes took place after Mousa, speaking at a mosque, declared a Muslim emirate starting in Rafah. He said that Hamas deviated from the path of Jihad and became an ‘atheist’ movement.

Mousa was killed in an explosion that took places in his home during clashes with Hamas security forces. Hamas said that the explosion was internal.

gaza strip | internal unrest | news report saed at imemc dot org