Hamas denies message on arresting Palestinian rocket launchers

The Islamic Hamas movement on Saturday said it has not sent any message to Israel through Qatari ambassador about arresting rocket launchers in Gaza Strip recently.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zohri told Xinhua that these are baseless claims, stressing that "restraints of the Palestinian resistance is an internal affair that has nothing to do with the Israeli occupation."

Israeli public radio reported that Hamas sent a message through Qatari mediator assuring the Coordinator of (Israeli) Government Activities in the Territories that it has arrested several Palestinians involved in rocket launching towards Israel last Wednesday.

Two rockets were launched against southern Israel from Gaza Strip on Friday night, but they landed within the borders of Gaza, reported the Israeli radio.

Islamic Salafist Ajnad Bayt Al-Maqdis militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in an emailed press release.

The militant group said that it will "be patient with the chasing, arrests and injustice by Hamas' apparatuses against the sheikhs, preachers and jihadi fighters of the Salaifst movement" and that will not allow anybody to "distort our calls, ideology and project."

The statement reaffirmed that the group will continue operations targeting Israel and called upon all Salafist groups to do the same.

The same group also fired rockets Wednesday night that landed in empty fields in south Israel without reporting any casualties, to which Israel responded with airstrikes on two locations of the Hamas armed wing, Al-Qassam brigades, in south and central Gaza without reporting causalities.

In 2014, Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian factions ending a 50-day large scale military offensive that waged on the coastal enclave during the summer of 2014. Endit