“The marks that have been left by Yehya Ayyash the leader and engineer is still present within the details of the ongoing conflict between the Palestinian resistance and the occupation” the Hamas Movement said in a statement on the 26th anniversary of Ayyash’s martyrdom a top commander of its armed wing — al-Qassam Brigades.
“The martyr and engineer (Ayyash) represented a unique addition to the nature of the conflict with the occupation and he introduced new equations that confused the occupation’s calculations and made it pay dearly for its crimes against our people” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem said.
Spokesman Qasem described Ayyash’s operational role in resisting the occupation and the growing resistance action after his martyrdom as “irrefutable evidence of the failure of the assassination policy to stop the Palestinian struggle and prevent the resistance from developing.”
He also said that the massive participation in Ayyash’s funeral reflected the national unity when Palestinian masses from all spectra bid farewell to him describing him as “one of the top leaders of the contemporary Palestinian revolution.”
Ayyash who had a degree in electrical engineering and was nicknamed “The Engineer” joined the armed wing of Hamas in 1992 and was one of its founders.
Ayyash was killed on January 5 1996 in Gaza City when his cellphone exploded during a phone call to his father in the West Bank. It was a targeted assassination by the Shin Bet Israel’s internal security service which intercepted the call confirmed his identity and remotely detonated the explosives instantly killing him.
