Hamas denies claim that Oct. 7 anti-Israel attack was ‘in revenge’ for Iranian general’s death

By Anadolu staff

ISTANBUL (AA) - Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Wednesday denied Iranian claims that its Oct. 7 attack against Israel was in revenge for the killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

Soleimani was assassinated in a US drone strike in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in January 2020.

Ramadan Sharif, a spokesman for Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said Wednesday that the Hamas attack was a retaliatory action for Soleimani’s assassination, according to Iran’s Mehr News Agency.

“Hamas denies the validity of the remarks made by the IRGC spokesman regarding the Al-Aqsa Flood operation and its motives,” the Palestinian group said in a statement, using the codename of its Oct. 7 attack.

Hamas stressed that Israeli threats to the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem were one of the motives for its cross-border attack against Israel.

“All actions carried out by the Palestinian resistance are in response to the Israeli occupation and its continued aggression against our people and our sanctities,” it added.

Nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Since then, Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip, killing at least 21,110 people, most of them women and children, and injuring 55,243 others.

The onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave's infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million people displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicines.

Tel Aviv has vowed to destroy Hamas and ensure the release of all hostages taken during the October attack. Some of them were returned after a temporary truce in November in exchange for some Palestinian prisoners.