Hamas keeping quiet over misfired PIJ rocket killing one of its men

Errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad killed Hamas “warrior” Yasser Nimr Al-Nabahin and three of his children.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Hamas is keeping mum about an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) during Operation Breaking Dawn that killed one of its men, the Jerusalem Post reported Monday.

The accident occurred on August 7, the last day of the three-day skirmish, when a projectile hit a house in Bureij in the Gaza Strip. The death of three boys, twin 13-year-olds and their nine-year-old brother, was reported immediately.

Not long afterward, the Palestinian Shehab News Agency reported that the father, Nasser Nimr Al-Nabahin, had succumbed to his injuries in the blast.

Hamas immediately claimed al-Nabahin as one of its own, describing him as a “warrior” who belonged to its Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Some reports describing al-Nabahin as a high-ranking policeman. Israel does not differentiate between the terrorist organization’s security figures, saying the supposedly civilian police force also fights against the IDF.

Arab media such as Al Jazeera freely reported that he and his children were “martyred” in an Israeli bombing. At their funeral, the Qatar-based news broadcaster said, hundreds “chanted angry slogans against the occupation and in support of the Palestinian resistance.”

No one at the funeral or afterward said what had really happened. The IDF had investigated the incident already on the same day and confirmed that it had not acted in the area on Sunday and that the hit on Bureij came from a misfired PIJ rocket.

There is no love lost between Hamas and PIJ. Hamas considers the smaller group, a direct Iranian proxy, as a rival trying to loosen its grip on the Gaza Strip. Hamas did not participate in the fighting, but it did issue statements of solidarity praising the “resistance” to Israeli forces.

Neither did Israel target Hamas, only striking PIJ targets.

This incident is similar to another errant strike the night before, when a misfired PIJ rocket struck the Jabalya refugee camp, killing four children. Then, too, Arab media blamed Israel, but the IDF supplied video evidence to disprove the false claim of a “massacre.”

The IDF says that some 200 of the PIJ’s 1,100 rockets launched at Israel during 66-hour conflict landed inside Gaza.