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Hamas Claims Killing of Israeli Policewoman, Raising Fears Over Its Growing Threat

by TheTower.org Staff |

The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Friday took credit for the killing of Israeli policewoman Hadas Malka in Jerusalem earlier that day, the Long War Journal reported.

Hamas official Izzat Risheq wrote on Twitter that Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) had dispatched the three terrorists that carried out the attack. He dismissed claims that the killers were affiliated with ISIS.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abou Zouhri later released a statement backing up Risheq’s claim, saying that two of the terrorists belonged to the PFLP and the third to Hamas.

The three attackers were identified by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, “as Adel Ankush, 18, from the West Bank village of Deir Abu-Mash’al near Ramallah, Bra’a Salah, 19, from the same village, and Asama Ahmed, 19, from the nearby village of Tsatfa Ata,” The Times of Israel reported.

Two of the three men attacked a group of Israeli officers near Damascus Gate at Jerusalem’s Old City with knives and a homemade gun. Malka, 23, arrived on the scene with a second group of officers and was stabbed to death by the third attacker, who was later shot and killed.

If the Palestinian assailants are originally from the West Bank, then Gaza-based Hamas “has much deeper roots in the area,” The Long War Journal observed.

Hamas has spent millions building up its terror infrastructure in preparation for a future conflict with Israel. Reporter Avi Issacharoff observed last week that by devoting the majority of its resources and energies to attacking Israel, Hamas proved that it remains “the same cynical organization that exploits the distress of Gaza’s residents for political gain.”

Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, formerly the head of the research division of Israeli military intelligence and later the director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, told reporters last May that Hamas is investing “a lot in making the necessary preparations so that in the next round, when they decide to start it, they will be able to inflict the heaviest damage on Israel.”

[Photo: Courtesy ]

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