MOSCOW, December 3 (Sputnik) — A top Hamas official Sheik Ahmad Bahr has denied allegations that Islamic State (IS) fighters have infiltrated the Palestinian exclave region of Gaza in a comment to Sputnik on Wednesday.
Media reports claimed earlier that the violent Sunni group was running terrorist cells within the Gaza Strip.
Ahmad Bahr, who is the deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, dismissed the rumors as groundless, saying that "all of this has emerged [in the media] in an attempt to create confusion in Gazan streets".
He accused those disseminating such rumors of trying to start a new bloodbath in the Gaza Strip, following Israel's brutal crackdown on the region in summer. Bahr stated Islamic State militants had "no targets" in Gaza and the exclave was "not on IS agenda".
Gaza has just begun to emerge from the impact of this year's 50-day military conflict with Israel. In October, the Haaretz newspaper reported that a group calling itself "Islamic State in Gaza" had claimed responsibility for a blast at a French cultural center in Gaza City but later withdrew the claim.
Islamic State is a Sunni jihadist group that has been fighting the Syrian government since 2012. In June, the IS insurgency spilled over the border from Syria seizing control of Iraq's Mosul and announcing the establishment of an Islamic caliphate on the territories across under its control.
