'Israel killed top Hamas commander'

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, an Israeli target since engineering the capture of Israeli soldiers two decades ago, was killed on January 20, Izzat al-Rishq told Reuters in the Syrian capital Damascus.

Mabhouh’s death lengthens Hamas’s list of what it describes as “martyrs”, and constitutes another setback for the group, which refuses to abandon its fight against the Jewish state.
Rishq said Mabhouh, 50, was an “important” member of Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’s military wing named after a Syrian religious leader who fought the British colonial forces in Palestine in the 1930s.

He said the brigades “will respond (against Israel) in the appropriate time and place”, but Hamas will not let the killing derail efforts to arrange for a prisoners’ exchange deal between Hamas and Israel that have run into difficulties.

Another Palestinian source said Mabhouh was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai without any injuries. “It seems that an autopsy was ordered and found traces of poison in his body. Hamas controls the information on this,” the source said.