Most of border dead were with us, says Hamas

A SENIOR Hamas leader has admitted that 50 of the 62 peopled killed during protests along the Gaza border on Monday were members of the Islamist group.

The comments, made on television by Salah Bardawil, a political leader in the group which controls the Gaza Strip, came as Hamas said it would continue the protests. The group hoped that a mass demonstration on June 5 would rival the size of this week’s protests, a spokesman said yesterday.

Two days after Israeli forces killed more than 60 Palestinians and wounded around 2,000, Hamas said the demonstrations would keep going ahead of the June anniversary of the 1967 war. “The protests will continue because they have not achieved their goals yet,” said Hazem Qasem, a spokesman. “Our desire here is for June 5 to be as big as May 14.”

The comments by Mr Bardawil were immediately seized upon by Israel’s military as it tried to fend off widespread international criticism over the number of people killed by live fire on the border. “The branding of the riots as ‘peaceful protests’ could not be further from the truth,” an Israeli military spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Guatemala became the first country to follow the United States’ lead and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, called the move “the beginning of something extraordinary” and said he hoped others would do the same.

As Israel and Hamas continued their war of words, Hamas refused to accept a medical shipment from the Israeli military, despite a shortage of hospital supplies to treat the wounded. Mr Qasem dismissed it as a propaganda stunt.

“The occupation is trying to show that it has a human face, which is wrong. These trucks carrying these medical supplies are covered with Palestinian blood,” he said.

Israel said the Hamas refusal was proof that it did not care about the residents of Gaza. Aid shipments from the UN and the Palestinian Authority were allowed in.