Terrorists recycling WWI munitions into new missiles

By WND Staff

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas terror organization, is recycling unexploded Israeli munitions from previous conflicts, cannon shells from the wrecks of World War I British warships and even water pipes left behind by Israel.

It’s using them to build “functional missiles” that could be used against Israel.

The information comes from a documentary broadcast on Al-Jazeera Network from Qatar reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

MEMRI said the documentary earlier this month “explained how Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades have been reclaiming unexploded Israeli munitions from 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, metal water pipes left behind by Israel when it withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and cannon shells from the wrecks of British warships that sank near Gaza during World War I.”

Hamas officials “described the process of reclaiming these munitions and turning them into functional missiles.”

The documentary also revealed “divers retrieving underwater shells, of metals being processed, of explosives being prepared, and of missiles being tested,” MEMRI said.

The report also said Hamas has been getting Kornet anti-tank missiles and Fair missiles from Iran and it has “hundreds of warheads, dozens of tons of explosives and propellants, and enough metal water pipes to produce thousands of rockets.”

The Anti-Defamation league explains Hamas is a “Palestinian Islamic extremist terrorist organization based in the Gaza Strip and West Bank that calls for the eradication of the state of Israel. Both the United States and the European Union have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.”

Its military wing often attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers through suicide bombings and rocket attacks.

The narrator in the documentary, according to MEMRI, states: “In this footage, which is being shown for the first time, members of the Al-Qassam Brigades can be seen reassembling the parts of a Fair missile that arrived in a new shipment of long range Iranian missiles. The resistance in Gaza [received] them despite the tightening of the siege. In these exclusive images, Kornet anti-tank missiles can be seen.”

In another scene, the narrator explains: “Under this rubble, there are unexploded Israeli missiles and shells. They have become a new source for the weapons of the resistance. The Al-Qassam Brigades are revealing a multi-phase project to transform the remnants of the Israeli war into modern missiles.”

Abu Ibrahim, commander of the Brigades’ Military Production Unit, said:” “At the beginning, we decided to collect those munitions from the ruined houses and fields, because they constituted a direct threat to the lives of the inhabitants and the farmers. During the process of removing [these duds], large and diverse quantities of munitions were accumulated by our brothers in the Engineering Corps.”

And Abu Salman of the Engineering Corps of the Brigades said, “After the 2014 war, the Engineering Corps dealt with many munitions throughout the Gaza Strip: bombs, mines, explosive devices and 155mm Howitzer shells. There were also hundreds of MK 84 bombs, each of which contains 470 kilograms of tritonal, a highly explosive material that is more powerful than TNT.”

The narrator tells viewers: “The reclamation of the unexploded Israeli shells was not an easy task. There were several martyrs in this complicated production project. One of the pioneers and supervisors of this project, Ibrahim Abu Al-Naja, was one of the most prominent martyrs. While the plan to reuse the explosives in the Israeli shells was moving ahead, long water pipelines were found buried in the areas of the settlements from which Israel withdrew in 2005.

“This discovery turned out to be a qualitative leap. These pipes, which stretched from the liberated settlements in the west across the Israeli border to the east, had been hidden from the eye. For years, they served Israel in its theft of Palestinian water.”

Ibrahim said the pipes were pulled from the ground and are being used for weaponry.

The narrator explains that even leftovers from World War I are helpful.

“The sea concealed in its depths what the resistance called ‘a precious military treasure.’ In an unexpected place, men from the Al-Qassam Brigades’ frogmen unit found the wrecks of two [British] warships that sank in the sea of Gaza [during WWI). It took a lot of effort, but they managed to get inside, where they found large quantities of sunken shells.”

Abu Musa, a Brigades spokesman, said: “We found a large metal structure with several types of cannons attached to it. It turned out these were the wrecks of a military ship. A professional committee was formed to investigate the matter and unearth the secrets around this discovery. We decided to expand the search perimeter around that ship. That is when we found another, smaller, ship approximately 800 meters away. On these two ships, we found rooms filled with cannon shells. In keeping with the instructions of our brothers, we began to extract those shells. The shells were secured and had no detonators. This made it easier for us to extract them from the wrecked ships. But since there were so many shells and they weighed so much, extracting them took us a lot of time and required a lot of effort.”

The narrator explains the discoveries are being used “in new missiles.”

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