Hamas confirms its commander arrested by Israeli troops in Ramallah

RAMALLAH, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Islamic Hamas movement on Sunday confirmed that Israel arrested one of its senior commanders in the West Bank after a decade-long tracking.

Maher Ouda, 47, was arrested last night in a village to the south of Ramallah city. The Israeli "occupation forces' success in kidnapping Ouda in the dead of night is only a sign of perfidy, fear and cravenness from confrontation," Hamas said in a statement sent to the press.

The Israeli army, Shin Bet security agency and police jointly conducted the detention of Ouda, who founded a Hamas cell that was directly responsible for killing 10 Israelis, a statement by the Israeli army said.

Ouda's activities in the second Palestinian Intifada, which started in 2000, included dispatching suicide-bombers to Israel, killing more than 70 people, according to the Israeli army statement.

Meanwhile, Hamas accused the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), dominated by President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, of aiding Israel in seizing Ouda.

The detention of Ouda "after tens of failures could never has happened without the huge security efforts that Fatah apparatuses in the West Bank, especially in Ramallah, to chase down Ouda and all colors of resistance."

Israel considered Ouda's arrest as "the final stage of thwarting Hamas' military headquarters in Ramallah," the army's statement says. In 2006, Israel napped Ibraheem Hamed, chief of Hamas' military wing in the West Bank, also in Ramallah.

Hamas said the detention of its leaders in the West Bank "is a tax we paid proudly for honor and steadfastness."

Source: Xinhua.
Link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-03/14/c_13210522.htm.