debkafile reports claim by Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: “The Shin Bet and the IDF have switched from aerial to ground-based targeted killings”
According to debkafile‘s counter-terrorism sources, Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades has sent out a warning to all armed Palestinian groups through its internal networks to be on their guard against the new Israeli method of targeted killings in the Gaza Strip – car bombs.
Al Aqsa reports this finding after investigating a series of killings in recent months of “resistance organization” leaders in Gaza. One was the March 1 liquidation of Islamic Jihad’s military commander, Khaled Daoud, whose car blew up; the most recent was Popular Resistance Committees military commander Yusuf al-Quqa, whose car exploded March 31, sparking bloody clashes between Fatah and Popular Resistance Committees gunmen.
An examination of the destroyed vehicles by Fatah sappers revealed that, in each instance, broken pieces at the scene of the blast came from two separate cars, but the usual fragments of airborne missiles were absent.
The Fatah investigators came to the conclusion that Israel had rigged large car bombs that were detonated by remote control as the targeted vehicles of Daoud and Quqa passed by. They deduced from the debris left by the car bombs and their method of detonation that a highly professional hand had been at work, pointing to the Shin Beit.
Israel had switched its tactics, they decided, from air to ground-based killings after some airborne missiles had missed their targets and hit passing Palestinian civilians, including children.
The Fatah warned all Palestinian terrorists that the Shin Bet was using collaborators to help position the new car bombs in the path of targeted operatives.