TEL AVIV - A Hamas commander killed in Dubai played a key role in smuggling Iranian-funded arms to Gaza, Israeli security sources said on Sunday, while refusing to comment on accusations that Israel was behind his death. Hamas said on Friday that Israel's Mossad spy agency had assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room on January 20, a possibility police in the United Arab Emirates did not rule out, though they said they suspected a foreign "criminal gang". Israel's government would not officially comment, but its media were unanimous in linking Mabhouh to the Gaza arms supply. One Israeli security source said yesterday Mabhouh had been "key" to Hamas efforts to smuggle rockets and other arms into his native Gaza Strip, ruled by the Palestinian Islamic faction and whose borders with Israel and Egypt are under blockade. "He was a strategic asset for Hamas when it came to its armament by Iran," the source said. Israel accuses Iran of supplying weapons to Hamas by sea and land routes such as Sudan and Egypt. Iran calls its support for Hamas diplomatic only. Meanwhile, London newspaper The Times reported yesterday that a hit squad that assassinated a top Hamas commander in his Dubai hotel room injected him with a drug that induced a heart attack. A team of assassins broke into the room of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh and killed him silently before photographing all the documents in his briefcase and left a 'do not disturb' sign on the door, said the paper quoting unnamed sources in the Middle East. Latest theories contradict a version of events given last week by Al-Mabhouh's brother, who told Haaretz that a medical team had determined the cause of death as a massive electric shock sustained to the head. Doctors had also found evidence of strangulation, he said. Dubai's police chief said yesterday that Israel's spy agency, Mossad, could be behind the murder of a top Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel room. "It could be Mossad, or another party," police chief Dhahi Khalfan told reporters. "Personally, I don't exclude any possibility. I don't exclude any party that has an interest in the assassination" of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhuh, Khalfan said. Dubai, a rich and glitzy city-state that forms part of the United Arab Emirates federation, has been exposing its murkier side with several murders and assassinations in recent years. Sulim Yamadayev, a bitter foe of pro-Russia Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in Dubai in March 2009.
