GAZA CITY, Aug 2 (AFP) - A former leading member of Hamas was executed in hospital here Monday, becoming the third suspected collaborator to be killed after a grenade attack at Gaza City's main prison, hospital sources said.
Walid Hamdiya was gunned down in his bed in the emergency department of Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital where he was recovering from injuries sustained in the early morning grenade attack.
Hamdiya was one of the most notorious of all Palestinian collaborators, having been jailed in the late-1990s for supplying information to Israeli forces on fellow members of the hardline Islamist movement.
Witnesses said that at least three masked gunmen had entered the ward to carry out the shooting while another two dozen had also gone to the hospital.
Hamdiya was one of a group of half a dozen prisoners who had been transferred to the hospital after the grenade attack on the cell which housed the collaborators.
His execution followed the killing of Mahmud al-Sharif who also was shot in the head by a group of gunmen who burst into his ward.
Although there was no official claim of responsibility for his execution, a source within another hardline group, Islamic Jihad, said Sharif had passed on information that led to the killing of a member of that group.
A third prisoner, 30-year-old Mussa Auwda, died in hospital of his injuries.
Security sources said that the remaining casualties from the grenade attack were now being relocated to a secret location.
The killings are a further illustration of a breakdown of law and order in Gaza and the West Bank.
An unprecedented string of kidnappings in Gaza last month prompted Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei to tender his resignation which he rescinded 10 days later.
Radical Palestinian movements have recently intensified their calls for tough action against "collaborators", and have staged a number of public executions.
Palestinian human rights organisations have condemned these extra-judicial executions and demanded that suspected collaborators be prosecuted in accordance with the law.
Palestinian collaborators are an essential part of Israel's strategy to capture or kill militants accused of involvement in anti-Israeli attacks.