Special to WorldTribune.com

NICOSIA — A senior operative of Hamas has been assassinated in
Syria.

Hamas sources said Kamel Ranaja was killed in Damascus on late June 27.
The sources said Ranaja had played a major role in Hamas weapons procurement
and worked with another operative assassinated in the United Arab Emirates
in 2010.

“This was a criminal act,” Hamas political bureau member Izzat Risheq said.

Ranaja was one of the few senior Hamas operatives to remain in Damascus. In late 2011, hundreds of military and political officials left Syria amid the Sunni revolt against President Bashar Assad.

The sources said several gunmen entered Ranaja’s apartment in Damascus and shot him dead. They said Hamas suspects that the killers were working for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

Israel has not reported any link to the killing. But Israeli officials
said Ranaja was a senior weapons dealer for Hamas and helped bring
Iranian-supplied weapons from Libya and Sudan.

“He was no saint,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on June 28.

Syrian opposition sources said Ranaja could have been killed by the
Assad regime. They said several Hamas figures had been threatened over the
last few months for refusing to help quell the Sunni revolt.

Ranaja, also known as Nizar Abu Mujahed, was a deputy of Mahmoud Al
Mabhouh, regarded as Hamas’s leading weapons procurer. Al Mabhouh was
assassinated in a Dubai hotel in a killing also attributed to Israel.

The sources said Ranaja would be buried in Jordan over the next few
days. They said the funeral would be attended by Hamas leaders, including
political bureau chief Khaled Masha’al.

  Ehud Barak, Hamas blames Mossad for assassination of weapons dealer in Damascus, Kamel Ranaja, Khaled Masha’al, Mossad, Sunni revolt in Syria