A top Hamas official has claimed that the terror group is ‘not far off’ from launching a ‘war of liberation’ that he says will be bigger than the October 7 incursion into Israel.
Hamas political bureau member Osama Hamdan made the stark claims in an interview with Lebanese media outlet Bel Moubashar Online.
In the interview, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), he ‘promise[d] that a war of liberation is coming, not just another October 7,’ adding that he thinks such an event is not far off.
Hamdan, in his late 50s, also expressed no regret for ‘shattering an entire division of the occupation army’, referring to the 1,200 Israelis, almost all of whom were civilians, killed by Hamas during the October 7 incursion.
The group targeted young women and children, as well as families, killing thousands and kidnapping hundreds in the chaos of the incursion.
The terror group’s gunmen were seen parading the body of 22-year-old Shani Louk, who was partying with her friends hours before at the Nova festival near Kibbutz Re’im, in the back of a 4×4 truck.
While her family held out hope that she was still alive, her family confirmed her passing in late October, though the circumstances of her death, as well as where and how the bone from her skull was found, are not currently clear.
Hamas kidnapped 26-year-old Noa Argamani from the Nova festival, where Shani was also taken.
Phone footage of the terrible day showed Noa being snatched from her friends and begging for her life on the back of a motorcycle. She was heard screaming: ‘Don’t kill me!’
It is not currently known where she is being held, or if she is even still alive, as she was not one of more than 100 hostages released by Hamas last week in exchange for a temporary ceasefire.
Her dying mother, currently battling stage four brain cancer, called on US president Joe Biden and the Red Cross to intervene, and shared a message for her daughter, saying: ‘If I don’t get to see you… please know I love you very much.’
The Hamas political leader’s stark warning comes as Israel’s spy chief has vowed to hunt down and kill the terror group’s leaders ‘wherever they are in the world’ even if it takes years.
TV station Kan aired secret recordings from the head of the country’s security agency known as Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, 58, in a news programme late on Sunday night.
Bar, who has been boss at Shin Bet for two years, compared the October 7 massacre that left at least 1,200 dead and more than 200 kidnapped to Gaza as ‘our Munich’.
