(JTA) — A Senior security official for Hamas was moderately wounded when his car exploded after Friday prayers in Gaza.
Taufiq Abu Naim was taken for medical treatment after the explosion outside the Nuseirat area of the the central Gaza Strip, Ynet reported.
Abu Naim has led Hamas’ effort both against Israel and the Islamic State and other Islamist groups that have attempted to challenge Hamas’ hegemony in Gaza. But the Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committees terrorist group blamed Israel for what they said was an attempted assassination.
“The Zionist fingerprint is clear, we must strike Israel’s agents,” a spokesperson for the Popular Resistance Committees was quoted as saying.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh visited Abu Naim in hospital, as did a delegation for the Fatah group of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The delegation was in Gaza for talks on finalizing a power-sharing agreement reached in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah earlier this month, which was supposed to end a decade-long bloody fight for dominance between the groups.
A spokesperson for the delegation said the explosion was “an attempt to prevent” the reconciliation, a statement that also implied involvement by Israel, which opposes the inclusion of Hamas in any Palestinian government.
In its official statement, however, Hamas named neither Israel nor any plans to take hostile action against it.
“The enemies of the Palestinian people and nation committed this cowardly act,” a Hamas spokesperson said.
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