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A key security operative of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas was under arrest in Syria tonight on suspicion of having helped an alleged Israeli hit squad identify Mahmoud al-Mabhouh before he was assassinated in Dubai, the Guardian has learned.
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Nahro Massoud, a Hamas security official, was in detention and under interrogation in Damascus in connection with the 19 January killing, which is now widely assumed to have been mounted by Israel's Mossad secret intelligence service.
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Killings of Palestinians by Israel have often involved Palestinian agents being used to identity the target.
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Middle East experts and diplomats see the Dubai plot as part of a wider clandestine struggle between Israel and Hamas – and a deliberate attempt to weaken the Palestinian organisation's links with Iran. Israel considered Mabhouh to be the point man in smuggling longer-range Iranian rockets into Gaza that would be capable of striking Israel's urban heartland.
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Dubai police identified Austria as "command centre" for the assassins, after mobile phone data showed at least seven numbers originating there.
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In December 2008 radical Islamic terrorists also coordinated their bomb attacks in Mumbai, in which 160 people were killed, using Austrian mobile phone numbers.