A Tunisian engineer who worked for Hamas before being assassinated last December was the architect of the terrorist group’s “air force,” a Hamas spokesman said in an al-Jazeera program broadcast on Sunday.

Hamas engineer Mohamad Zawari was “one of the leaders of the military wing that oversaw the ‘Ababil’ unmanned drone program,” the spokesman told the Qatari network, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The official added that at the start of Hamas’ 2008 war against Israel, Zawari “finished the production of 30 drones.”

While Hamas blamed Israel for killing Zawari in the Tunisian city of Sfax, no clear link to Israel appears to have been established. Five suspects were arrested by Tunisian authorities in connection with the assassination.

In February, the IDF shot down a Hamas drone that approached Israeli airspace. Last September, the IDF intercepted a drone heading for Israeli territory, while a UAV crashed close to the Gaza border fence in June. Last year, Israeli authorities thwarted an attempt to smuggle drone models and disassembled drone parts into Gaza via the postal system. Drones were also launched from Gaza during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.

Reports in recent weeks show that Hamas is preparing for a new war against Israel. In April, an IDF unit that monitors the border with Gaza told The Times of Israel that it observed Hamas preparing divers who could attack Israel by sea. In March, it was reported that Hamas had developed powerful new rockets that could threaten towns near the border with Gaza.

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: شبكة قدس الاخبارية / YouTube ]