Fadi al-Batsh, a 35-year-old scientist, was believed to be helping Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip, to develop rockets to fire at Israel

There was no sign of imminent danger as the man walked from his high-rise apartment to dawn prayers on Saturday at his local mosque in the residential area of Setapak in Kuala Lumpur. Suddenly, from nowhere two men drove up on a motorbike and fired at least ten bullets with a handgun, four of which struck his head and body, killing him immediately.

Mr Batsh had lived in Malaysia for about ten years. He was a lecturer at the University of Kuala Lumpur, where he taught power engineering.

For reasons best known to them, the Palestinian militant group Hamas has accused the Israeli spy agency Mossad of assassinating the engineer.




Israel would neither confirm nor deny any involvement in the assassination.

Hear Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli defence minister:
“The terror organisations have a tradition to blame every settling of accounts on Israel.

“The man was not a saint. He wasn’t working on improving the electricity network or the water infrastructure.

“We constantly see a settling of accounts between various factions in the terrorist organisations and I suppose that is what happened in this case. We heard the announcements of the leaders of Hamas taking responsibility for the man, and explaining that he was working on manufacturing rockets and improving their accuracy.”