Hamas has arrested Abdullah Alashqar, a prominent Salafi leader in Gaza, who has been on the government’s wanted list for more than four years, a Salafi source in the Strip told Breitbart Jerusalem.
Alashqar is accused of masterminding dozens of rocket attacks on Israel as well as attacks on Israeli targets in Sinai, making him a prime target for Israel.
In 2012, Alashqar founded the Shura Council of the Mujahideen in the Holy Land, and maintained intimate ties with Salafi militants in Sinai. In 2006, as a member of the Army of Islam, then a group affiliated with the Saladin Brigades, he blew up a CIA vehicle in Gaza.
In January 2015, his name was added to the list of terrorists wanted by the American government, after his organization pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organization.
The source said that a military unit of the Hamas government, together with a special force of the Izz ad-Din al Qassam Brigades, arrested Alashqar, known as Abu Almuhtaseb Almaqdesi, while he was hiding in a downtown Gaza apartment. He added that the noose around his neck tightened as more and more Salafi militants were arrested.
In some of those raids, he managed to escape at the last minute.
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