Ex-Hamas spokesman found dead in shelled Gaza neighborhood

A former spokesman for Hamas was found dead Thursday in a neighbourhood of the city that was heavily bombed by Israel, the movement said.

Ayman Taha was killed when Israeli forces “targeted him in the apartment where he was with several others in Gaza City” in the Shejaiya neighbourhood, the group said in a statement.

Their area was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting and bombardment during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

He was severely wounded and died later, the statement said.

The body of Taha, who was living in the Bureij refugee camp in the centre of the enclave, “arrived at Shifa hospital in Gaza City before it was transferred to his family’s home in the Bureij camp,” a medical source said.

Taha -- the son of one of the group’s founders -- was a well known spokesman for the movement before his arrest in February. Hamas’s security apparatus detained him as part of an investigation into the possible “abuse of funds” and other allegations.