HAMAS terror bosses abruptly fled their safe-haven Qatar and turned off their phones as elite Israeli hitmen swore to hunt and kill every last one of them.
At least three panicked senior Hamas members and their superiors recently ran from Qatar, where the brutes have been allowed to run a political office for a decade, in a desperate bid to escape the bounties on their heads.
Israel’s intelligence services vowed to eliminate all of the savage militants responsible for the bloody massacres of October 7 as the war in the Gaza Strip winds down.
Chief of the Israel Security Agency Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, said: “We will look for them everywhere: in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everywhere. It will take a few years, but we will do it.”
A number of terrorist leaders have now fled Qatar, turning off their mobile phones and refusing calls for fear of being tracked or caught, according to Israeli media outlet Kan which cited sources in Doha.
Some of the chiefs are believed to be heading to Algeria, while senior Hamas member Saleh al-Arouri is reported to have fled his home in Lebanon for Turkey.
Their escapes followed a warning by Doha to Hamas that Qatari authorities could no longer ensure the terrorists’ security due to the threat of attacks by Israel’s intelligence services.
Hamas has long received protection from countries including Lebanon, Iran, Russia, and Turkey, as well as Qatar.
Turkey, despite its diplomatic ties to Israel, has warned there will be “serious consequences” for Israel if it tries to hunt down the militants who have sought refuge on its soil.
A Turkish intelligence official said: “Necessary warnings were made to the interlocutors based on the news of Israeli officials’ statements, and it was expressed to Israel that [such an act] would have serious consequences,” The Arab Weekly reports.
The new assassination campaign, ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is an extension of Israel’s decades-long operations where hitmen have taken down Palestinian militants across the Middle East while disguised as women and tourists.
Since its formation in the 1940s, Israel’s spy agency Mossad has employed a range of James Bond-style tactics and tools such as booby-trapped cars, phone bombs, remote-controlled guns, and poison to take out its enemies.
The ruthless organisation is understood to have an annual budget of £2.2billion and more than 7,000 staff members.
Netanyahu said last month: “I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are.”
Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant added at the time that Hamas leaders are living on “borrowed time”.
He said: “They are marked for death. The struggle is worldwide, both the terrorists in Gaza and those who fly in expensive planes.”
Among the Hamas leaders who settled in Qatar in 2012 – the year Qatar opened an office for the terror group in Doha – are Khaled Meshaal and his deputy Moussa Abu Marzouk.
The assassination threat comes after Hamas launched its brutal attack on Israel in early October, slaughtering 1,200 – mostly civilian – men, women, and children and taking some 240 hostage.
Targeting the terror group’s leaders quickly became a top priority for Israel, along with securing the safe release of the innocents who were captured by the brutes and dragged to Gaza.
Relatives remain desperate for the release of 137 hostages who are still being held in underground Gaza, including two children and 15 women, after others were released during a temporary ceasefire.
Doha played a key role in mediating the week-long truce in Gaza which broke down at the beginning of the month and involved the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Israel is not known to have carried out any targeted killing operations in Qatar since October 7 as doing so could have impacted its ability to negotiate the release of hostages, Israeli officials say, but plans are now developing at a rapid pace.
