Hamas on Sunday executed five Palestinians in Gaza for murder and “collaborating” with Israel, the terror group said in a statement.
“On Sunday morning, the death sentence was carried out against two condemned over collaboration with the occupation (Israel), and three others in criminal cases,” Hamas said in a statement.
The executions would “achieve public deterrence and security,” Hamas said.
The defendants were given “their full rights to defend themselves.”
Two of the five were convicted of collaborating with Israel in the early 1991 and 2001 respectively, the group said, adding that the intelligence supplied to Israel included information about the location of rocket launchpads which led to Israeli strikes on Gaza.
Hamas has sentenced 13 people to death since the beginning of the year, according to numbers released in July by rights group B’Tselem.
Palestinian law stipulates that only the president of the Palestinian Authority can greenlight a death sentence, but Hamas, which has been a rival to the ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank, has never approached PA President Mahmoud Abbas for permission to execute.
The last Hamas execution was in 2017, with three Palestinians hung from gallows in a public square in Gaza.