People hold Hamas flags as Palestinians gather after performing the last Friday of Ramadan to protest over the possible eviction of several Palestinian families from homes on land claimed by Jewish settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, in Jerusalem’s Old City, May 7, 2021. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

i24 News – The Hamas Islamist movement ruling the Gaza Strip announced on Sunday that it executed five Palestinians, including two for “collaboration” with Israel.

“On Sunday morning, the death sentence was carried out against two condemned over collaboration with the occupation (Israel), and three others in criminal cases,” Hamas said in a statement.

It added that the defendants had previously been given “their full rights to defend themselves.”

Hamas’s interior ministry provided the initials and years of birth of the five executed Palestinians but did not give their full names. The two executed over “collaboration” with Israel were two men born in 1978 and 1968.

Of the two, the older was a resident of Khan Yunis in the south of the blockaded Gaza Strip. He was convicted of supplying Israel in 1991 with “information on men of the resistance, their residence… and the location of rocket launchpads,” Hamas said.

The second was condemned for supplying Israel in 2001 with intelligence “that led to the targeting and martyrdom of citizens” by Israeli forces, the statement added.

The statement said that the three others executed on Sunday had been convicted of murder.

Two were reportedly executed by shooting, and the rest were executed by hanging, according to Abu Ali Express. 

The news organization, citing Gaza journalists, named one of the executed as Jibril Carmut, who killed a Hamas policeman during clashes several months ago.

Palestinian law says President Mahmoud Abbas has final word on whether executions can be carried out. However, Abbas has no effective rule in Gaza and is serving the 17th year of what was scheduled to be a four year term, having refused to hold elections on multiple occasions.