Hamas engineer Fadi Muhammad al-Batash was shot dead in Malaysia on Saturday in an anonymous assassination.
Al-Batash, an expert in attack-drone and rocket systems, was arriving at a mosque for morning prayers near Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia Saturday morning when two men on a motorcycle, who allegedly waited for him to arrive, approached him and shot him approximately 20 times.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyah and Senior Islamic Jihad leader Khaled al-Batash both accused Israel’s Mossad national intelligence agency of carrying out the targeted killing.
“The Islamic Resistance Movement mourns the son of its sons, the righteous, and a knight of its knights, a scholar of young Palestine scholars and the guardian of the Book of Allah,” Hamas said on a statement posted to its website. “The martyr was an example in calling God and working for the Palestinian cause.”
Fadi Muhammad al-Batash was originally from Gaza and assisted in Hamas terror plots, but left for Malaysia in 2011.
The local police chief in Malaysia stated that other people were at the scene, but that the killers focused exclusively on al-Batash, leading them to suspect it was a targeted assassination.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, speaking at al-Batash’s mourning tent, blamed Israel for the shooting and said “Israel has an open account with the Palestinians, it has moved the war overseas,” insinuating that Hamas would move its terror operations against Israel overseas as well.
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett said al-Batash must not be brought to burial in Gaza until Hamas relinquishes the bodies of Israeli kidnapped soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul.
