Abu Shabab militia appears to confirm reports leader was killed by fellow tribe member

The Israeli-backed Abu Shabab militia appears to confirm that its namesake and commander Yasser Abu Shabab was killed earlier this week in a gunfight with members of the Abu Sanima family, which like him belonged to the Bedouin Tarabin tribe.

On a Facebook page affiliated with it, the militia, which goes by the “Popular Forces,” shares a post from yesterday by a user who identifies as Amna Abu Shabab, Yasser’s Abu Shabab’s wife, who says he was killed while “trying to solve a dispute among members of the Abu Sanima family after tensions worsened and shot were fired.”

“As usual, Yasser went into the heart of the affair, searching for the word that would put out the fire rather than the bullet that would ignite it,” says the post, without offering specifics about the dispute.

The post comes after a Turkey-based anti-Hamas activist Hamza al-Masri, citing Abu Sanima family sources, said on Telegram that Abu Shabab was killed in a gunfight sparked by his refusal to secure the release of a relative of another prominent member of the tribe.

Al-Masri did not specify who had detained the nephew’s son, but indicated that Abu Shabab’s group had access to him. At least one Gazan recently released from Israeli custody has recounted first having been abducted by the Abu Shabab militia and then handed over to Israel.

Israeli defense officials have said the militia leader was killed as a result of “internal conflict,” and Hamas’s anti-collaborationist Sahm unit also said he had been killed by a fellow Tarabin tribe member.