The Palestinian Fatah movement on Tuesday rebutted Hamas' accusation over the killing of a senior Hamas commander in Dubai last month.

"We... were surprised by such accusation from the part of Hamas which has always been used to turn all the battles of the Palestinian people into inter-Palestinian conflict," Ahmed Assaf, a spokesman for the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Xinhua in Cairo.

"This deviates the investigation from its true path and turns the eyes from the true criminal which is Israel," Assaf added.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a 50-year-old senior Hamas commander, was found dead in his hotel room on Jan. 20, a day after he arrived in Dubai. He was born in the Gaza Strip but has been living in Syria since 1989.

Following the incident, Hamas accused Israel's intelligence service, known as Mossad, of being behind the killing.

The case is still under investigation and Dubai police said early this month that those who killed al-Mabhouh were a group of 11 people, including at least one woman, all of whom entered the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with fake European passports.

Hamas said two Palestinian National Authority (PNA) officers, who were detained in Jordan, were involved in the killing of al- Mabhouh.

Terming al-Mabhouh as "a martyr of the Palestinian people," Assaf urged Hamas to investigate its exiled leadership in Damascus for penetrators.

"We urged Hamas to unveil this penetration in its ranks, especially its leadership in Damascus. Al-Mabhouh's movement are not known except for a limited number of people who are so close to him," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency February 24, 2010)