Hamas frogman dies in training accident

A member of Hamas’s military wing died during a training exercise Wednesday morning, according to a statement released by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

The man was named as Suleiman Mohammed al-Ayadi from the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Local sources told the Palestinian news site Milad that al-Ayadi, 22, drowned during a training session with the al-Qassam Brigade’s frogman unit.

A tweet from the official al-Qassam Brigades account showed a picture of the deceased and quoted a popular Quranic verse about martyrdom.

https://twitter.com/qassam_arabic1/status/707489435630358528

On July 8, 2014, during the war with Gaza, four Hamas frogmen who reached the Israeli shore at Zikim, a kilometer north of the Gaza-Israel border, were shot dead by the IDF. One of the four had attached a bomb to an IDF tank; it exploded without causing damage.

Though a senior Hamas official recently told The Times of Israel that the Gaza-ruling terror group is not interested in war with Israel now, it continues to make preparations for the next round of conflict.

These preparations include near-daily rocket tests as well as continued tunneling. At least nine Hamas members have died in a series of tunnel collapses over the past few months.

Stuart Winer contributed to this report.