Islamic State threatened the Palestinian group Hamas on Wednesday, vowing to end the faction’s government in the territory.
In a 16-minute long video shared by social media accounts sympathetic to IS on Wednesday, militants based in Syria’s Aleppo Province condemned Hamas for what they called crackdown on Salafist groups in the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reported.
Another IS militant condemned the Palestinian faction for referring to IS and its supporters as “khawarij,” a term used to refer to a group of Muslims in early Islamic history, meaning “those who have transgressed.”
The militant later refers to IS seizure of parts of the Yarmouk refugee camp in the Syrian capital of Damascus after clashes with Palestinian groups, including a faction associated with Hamas.
“What is happening today in Syria, especially in the Yarmouk camp … will happen in Gaza.”
IS insurgents overran much of the Yarmouk camp in April to establish a foothold in the Syrian capital for the first time. Palestinian and Syrian officials have vowed to retake Yarmouk, a built-up area that housed 160,000 Palestinians and Syrians before the civil war.
Hamas has clamped down on supporters of IS in recent months, in a campaign to snuff out purported attempts by the group, which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq, to establish a foothold in Gaza.
