Key Hamas member is killed in Malaysia
gaza city — Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group said on Saturday that a man who was gunned down in Malaysia was an important member of the organisation, raising suspicions that Israel was behind the brazen killing.
Hamas said Palestinian engineer Fadi Al Batsh was a “loyal” member and a “scientist of Palestine’s youth scholars”. It gave no further details on his scientific accomplishments but said he had made “important contributions” and participated in international forums in the field of energy. Hamas stopped short of blaming Israel, saying only that he had been “assassinated by the hand of treachery”. But relatives of Al Batsh said they believe Israel targeted him.
Malaysian police say the 34-year-old Al Batsh was gunned down early on Saturday by two assailants who shot at least eight bullets from a motorbike as he was heading to a mosque for dawn prayers in Kuala Lampur. —
gaza city — The family of a Palestinian professor and Hamas member accused Israel’s Mossad spy agency on Saturday of killing him on the streets of Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian police said Fadi Mohammed Al Batsh, 35, was killed in a drive-by motorcycle shooting as he headed on foot to take part in dawn (Fajr) prayers on Saturday.
In a statement from the Hamasruled Gaza Strip, his family said: “We accuse the Mossad of being behind the assassination.”
The Islamist Palestinian movement said Batsh, a research scientist specialising in energy issues, was one of its members.
Hamas did not accuse Israel of killing him but called Batsh a “martyr” — a word it usually uses for people killed by Israeli forces.
Contacted by AFP, an Israeli official refused to comment.
Kuala Lumpur police chief Datuk Seri Mazlan Lazim said one of two suspects on a high-powered motorcycle “fired 10 shots, four of which hit the lecturer in the head and body. He died on the spot.”
“The police also found two empty bullet shells there,” the police chief said, according to Malaysia’s staterun Bernama news agency.
The police chief said that footage from closed-circuit television cameras near the scene of the shooting showed that two assailants waited for around 20 minutes in the area before attacking.
“We believe the lecturer was their target because two other individuals walked by the place earlier unharmed. We will view the recordings of all the CCTV in the area to identify the suspects and get the registration number of the motorcycle,” he said.
The Palestinian representative in Malaysia, Anwar Al Agha, told AFP that Batsh, who was married and a father of three, was a lecturer in electrical engineering who had lived in Malaysia for the past 10 years.
“I visited the site of the attack. Fadi is a member of Hamas,” he said,
Asked if Mossad could be responsible for his killing, he said: “I cannot comment on this. We have to wait for the official investigation.”
The Batsh family urged Malaysian authorities to investigate his murder and “arrest those responsible for killing him before they flee”.
The Mossad is believed to have assassinated Palestinian militants and scientists in the past, but has never confirmed such operations.
Hamas has accused Mossad of assassinating one of its drone experts — Mohammed Zouari — in Tunisia in 2016, and the spy agency is also believed to have been behind the 2010 murder of top Hamas militant Mahmud Al Mabhuh in a Dubai hotel. —