Saedni, post mortem
Saedni, post mortemReuters

Arab "Palestinian" sources quoted by an independent Israeli blog, Terror Watch, said that Hamas helped Israel locate and kill Salafist terror leader Hisham Saedni and another top terrorist, Ashraf Sabah. The two were killed Saturday by a missile that struck their motorcycle in the Jebalya neighborhood in northern Gaza.

The report has not been confirmed by any other source and the reliability of the blog cannot be ascertained.

The blog claimed that elements within Hamas who fight the Mujahedeen Shura Council, which Saedni headed, gave Israel Saedni's private telephone number, in order to get rid of what they saw as a subversive element endangering Hamas's rule in Gaza.

The source went on to say that Saedni received a call from Israeli intelligence shortly before he was killed, apparently to verify his identity before the missile was launched, and that it seems that Sabah was the person who answered the phone.

Salafists writing on websites affiliated with the global jihad also blame Hamas, according to Terror Watch. The Salafists say Israeli intelligence has penetrated deeply into Hamas's "security mechanisms" and they, too, hint that elements within Hamas cooperated with Israel on the elimination of Saedni.

Egyptian news site Asharq Al-Awsat reported last month that relations between Hamas and Salafist groups operating out of Gaza "have entered a fractious stage" and that Hamas "has begun to tighten the noose around Salafist Jihadist elements."

The Hamas government in Gaza reportedly began the campaign in the aftermath of the August attack on an Egyptian army checkpoint that killed 16 Egyptian officers and soldiers, and intensified its arrests of Salafist groups after they fired rockets at Israel against Hamas's wishes.

Salafist Jihadist official Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir informed Asharq Al-Awsat that “Hamas arrested 37 [Salafist Jihadist] members in a short period of time… they are pursuing the jihadists from house to house and street to street.”