Gaza

Al-Qaida associate among 23 killed in Gaza clashes
By Avi Issacharoff

A leader of a faction associated with al-Qaida was killed amid clashes with Hamas in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Hamas officials said. Abdel-Latif Moussa, a leader of Jund Ansar Allah, was one of the 23 people killed in the fighting.
Advertisement
Other casualties included Abu-Jibril Shimali, a senior commander of Hamas' military wing Iz al-din al-Qassam, and a senior al-Qaida activist from Syria known as Syrian Abu Abdallah. Six of the dead were civilians. Hamas said Moussa detonated an explosive belt he was wearing, killing himself as well as several others near him, including a Hamas mediator who was trying to persuade him to surrender. The clashes began on Friday, after Moussa, speaking at Friday prayers in Rafah, said Gaza was being "reborn" as "an Islamic emirate loyal to Osama bin Laden." Exchanges of gunfire began immediately after the sermon, as Hamas security forces surrounded the mosque, set up roadblocks and imposed a complete curfew on the area. In the speech, Moussa had assailed Hamas as not Muslim enough and called the Hamas government "secular." He called upon Hamas to begin "implementing the laws of Islam and the border of Islam, or else become a secular party hiding behind Islam." There are several hundred al-Qaida supporters in Gaza. They oppose the Hamas government, saying it does not enforce Sharia law. "We will set up the Gaza emirate on our dead bodies, and we will apply the laws and edicts of Sharia," Moussa said in his speech. Ismayil Haniyeh, the Hamas leader of Gaza, announced over the weekend that his government would not tolerate the presence of "any foreign soldiers in the Gaza Strip," hinting that Moussa's group included al-Qaida activists from abroad. "The toxic peace promoted by the United States, Israel, and a few Arabs and Palestinians will lead to death and destruction," he said.