Mashaal admits Hamas members killed 3 teens

Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal admits that Hamas members killed three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June, though he says the leadership of the organization was not made aware of the details of the abduction plan in advance.

In an interview with Michael Isikoff for Yahoo News in Doha, the Qatari capital, Mashaal says that the leadership of Hamas learned of the details of the killings of the three students, Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, from the Israeli investigation into them.

“We were not aware of this action taken by this group of Hamas members in advance,” he says. “But we understand people are frustrated under the occupation and the oppression, and they take all kinds of action.”

In the same breath, he stresses that Hamas differs from Syria and Iraq’s Islamic State — which he calls a “religious, violent group” that is a “totally different phenomenon” — in that it does not target civilians, aiming its rockets “most of the time” at military targets and IDF bases.

“This is an opportunity for me to say we are against the killing of any civilians, any journalists,” he tells Isikoff. Claiming that it is Israel who is killing civilians and journalists, Mashaal vows that Hamas will, in the future, take measures to warn Israeli civilians of impending attacks, just as Israel does in the Gaza Strip — but admits that Hamas has a “problem” directing its strikes at military targets only.

“We do not have sophisticated weapons. We do not have the weapons available to our enemy … so aiming is difficult … We promise that if we get more precise weapons, we will only target military targets,” he says.