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Reuters
Reuters
Health

Senior Palestinian militant jailed by Israel dies of cancer

Palestinians including gunmen gather during a protest following the death of senior Palestinian militant Nasser Abu Hmaid who was jailed by Israel and died in an Israeli hospital where he has been moved to after his health conditions deteriorated, in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 20, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

(This Dec. 20 story has been corrected to remove reference to the Palestinian militant dying in an Israeli jail in the headline)

RAMALLAH/GAZA (Reuters) - A senior Palestinian militant jailed for life by Israel, and who was cited by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a speech to the United Nations, died of cancer on Tuesday, authorities said.

Nasser Abu Hmaid, co-founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Abbas's Fatah movement, had been convicted of killing seven Israelis and planning other attacks. The Brigades is deemed a terrorist group in Israel and the West.

Palestinians including gunmen gather during a protest following the death of senior Palestinian militant Nasser Abu Hmaid who was jailed by Israel and died in an Israeli hospital where he has been moved to after his health conditions deteriorated, in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 20, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

He was serving multiple life sentences and had been in prison since 2002.

In Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, armed members of Abbas's Fatah faction rallied in the streets, some firing rifles into the air before they announced the formation of a new armed group called "The Masked Lion", a nom de guerre of Hmaid.

Abbas accused Israel of neglecting Abu Hmaid's medical needs and held it responsible for his death, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said. Israel's Prisons Service said Abu Hmaid, 50, had received "close and continuous treatment" for his lung cancer.

People protest following the death of Palestinian militant Nasser Abu Hmaid who was jailed by Israel and died in an Israeli hospital where he has been moved to after his health conditions deteriorated, in Gaza City, December 20, 2022. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

After Abu Hmaid's health condition deteriorated, the Prisons Service moved him to a hospital outside the jail and let his family visit him briefly on Monday, in the presence of guards, his mother told Voice of Palestine radio.

"Thank God, I and his brothers were able to see him and pay him farewell," she said, adding that she hoped his body would be released for burial.

In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly in September, Abbas said Palestinians were telling "the heroic prisoner Nasser Abu Hmaid and his companions that dawn is coming, and it is time for their chains to be broken".

Latifa, the mother of Palestinian prisoner Nasser Abu Hmaid, who was jailed by Israel and died in an Israeli hospital where he has been moved to after his health conditions deteriorated, reacts at her home in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 20, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of the rival Islamist Hamas group, mourned Hmaid's death in a statement as "a crime that will not go unpunished."

(Reporting by Nidal Almughrabi in Gaza and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Robert Birsel and Tomasz Janowski)

Latifa, the mother of Palestinian prisoner Nasser Abu Hmaid, who was jailed by Israel and died in an Israeli hospital where he has been moved to after his health conditions deteriorated, looks on at her home in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 20, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
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