GAZA CITY (AFP) - The armed wing of the hardline Palestinian movement Hamas threatened to take aim at Israeli targets abroad after one of its founders was killed in a Damascus car bombing blamed on Israel.
"The Zionist enemy opened the door for the battle to move outside Palestine," the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement.
"Even though Ezzedine al-Qassam was concerned to keep the guns in the direction of Israel, and we let hundreds and thousands of Zionists move and travel in all capitals in the world, it was not us who started the struggle abroad, but Zionist enemy, and he will be responsible for what he did."
The statement was issued several hours after Ezzedine Sheikh Khalil, 40, was killed when his car blew up in the Syrian capital Damascus in what the hardline Palestinian movement said was an assassination by Israel`s Mossad spy agency.
In the statement, Ezzedine al-Qassam identified Khalil as one of the armed wing`s founders as well as one of its leaders.
A Hamas official in Gaza accused Israel of trying to broaden the conflict by targetting militant leaders outside the Palestinian territories and vowed that his movement would wreak bloody revenge.