Yasser Abu Shabab, head of the anti-Hamas Abu Shabab militia, was killed by assassins in Gaza, Israeli sources confirmed to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
The self-proclaimed “Popular Forces” of the Gaza Strip, the Abu Shabab militia, had reportedly been collaborating with Israel on anti-Hamas efforts in southern Gaza.
Abu Shabab was killed in an internal clan scuffle, rather than by Hamas terrorists, a source confirmed. According to the source, he was initially wounded and was evacuated to a southern Israel hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds.
The Popular Forces released a statement confirming Abu Shabab's death later on Thursday evening. The militia affirmed that he was killed whilst trying to solve a local clan dispute, not by members of Hamas. The gang said that it would continue on with its mission until the "last terrorist was eliminated in Gaza" and will keep working for "a bright and secure future for our people who believe in peace."
Israeli media initially reported that Abu Shabab was evacuated to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. However, the Beersheba hospital later clarified that he had neither been evacuated to Soroka nor had he died there.
Abu Shabab, a Bedouin man in his 30s, led the Popular Forces, a crime group in Gaza that is significantly smaller than Hamas.
Senior UN official Georgios Petropoulos once called him “the self-styled power broker of east Rafah,” according to the report. Abu Shabab was accused several times of looting aid trucks in Gaza by aid truck drivers and international humanitarian officials.
In an interview quoted in The New York Times, Abu Shabab said that he did not raid the trucks and instead asserted that he was feeding his community. “We are taking trucks so we can eat, not so we can sell,” he said, accusing Hamas of stealing aid.
The Popular Forces also said that it had safeguarded aid trucks entering the enclave.
“We confirm that 92 trucks were secured and entered areas under the protection of our popular forces and exited safely under our supervision,” a post from the criminal group reads.
Leader of anti-Hamas militia killed in Gaza
Israeli public broadcaster KAN News reported that videos on social media allegedly showed separate members of the Abu Shabab militia being killed by people yelling chants in favor of Hamas.
In recent months, Hamas’s military wing, the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, claimed to have deterred the Abu Shabab militia.
In late October, the al-Qassam Brigades and Hamas’s official media agency, SAFA, claimed that they had arrested “a number of militia members and confiscated military equipment and tools” used by the militia.
The deterrence force also claims to have carried out similar raids against Abu Shabab’s militia several times in October, including on October 17, 15, 13, and 2, according to previous SAFA reports.