‘Terror group was warned by Egypt of planned assassination’

Egypt warned Gazan terror group the Popular Resistance Committees of Israel’s plan to assassinate its leader, Zuhair al-Qaissi, news website Ynet reported Sunday.

Abu Mujahid, a spokesperson for the terror organization, said Sunday that recently captured collaborators in Gaza told Hamas that Israeli intelligence officers told them to follow al-Qaissi “everywhere he went,” Ynet reported.

Egyptian officials had warned the group of the Israeli plan to kill their leader during a February meeting between leaders of the group and Egyptian intelligence officials, according to Mujahid.

On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces carried out a targeted assassination against al-Qaissi and another top PRC operative who was released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal in October 2011, Mahmoud Hanani. The IDF said the group was planning another major terror attack along the Egyptian-Israeli border.

Al-Qaissi is believed to have been behind the multi-faceted terror attack in southern Israel in August 2011, during which Gaza terrorists entered Israel through the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, dressed as Egyptian security officers, and killed eight Israelis.

Egypt reportedly asked the terror organization not to carry out acts of terror against Israel through Sinai — but stopped short of asking them to stop their activities against Israel altogether, according to Ynet. Instead, they told the group not to use the Sinai Peninsula as a base for staging future attacks and instead to limit themselves to acting out of the Gaza Strip rather than Egyptian territory like they had done in the past.