Hamas, the ruling party in the Gaza Strip, executed five Palestinians on Sunday. Two of the men had been convicted of collaborating with Israel and three of murder, according to the Interior Ministry, which is controlled by the Islamist organization. Three of the convicts were reportedly hanged and two shot.
The Hamas Interior Ministry only gave the initials, years of birth and places of birth of those executed, not their full names. The two men who were executed for “collaboration” with Israel were born in 1968 and 1978.
The older of the two men was reportedly hanged. He was sentenced to death for providing Israel with information in 1991 about Palestinian militants, their whereabouts and the location of rocket launchers.
The second man was reportedly shot dead by a firing squad. In 2001, he passed on secret information to Israel that led to targeted attacks by the Israeli army and the deaths of the people attacked.
In the past, Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel or murder were executed several times in the Gaza Strip. Human rights organizations had criticized this.
These were the first executions in the coastal strip since 2017. At that time, three Palestinians who had been sentenced to death in summary proceedings before military courts for the killing of a senior Hamas commander were publicly executed in a square in Gaza.
