Gunmen Made into Lawmen for Hamas Force

(USA Today) Matthew Gutman - Crawling in the sand, Muhammad Abu Mujahid leads a band of guerrillas on a training exercise. Their mock mission: freeing Western hostages held by rogue Palestinian gangs. Until last month, Abu Mujahid's men were one of those rogue gangs. Now they are part of a new paramilitary force, known as the Police Support Unit, being assembled by Hamas. He and his men come from the Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committee, a militant group that specialized in firing rockets into Israel and shooting at Israeli army jeeps. Israeli army reserve Col. Yoni Fighel, an analyst at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism, an Israeli think tank, says the new security force is a Hamas proxy that might "provide law and order in the morning and terrorism in the evening."


2006-04-16 00:00:00

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