by Palestinian police said unknown assailants on Friday shot and wounded an official affiliated with Gaza’s Hamas rulers in the West Bank.
Nasser al-Shaer, who served as Hamas deputy prime minister for a year and a half after the terror group won the last Palestinian election in 2006, was hospitalized with gunshot wounds to his legs.
Pictures on social media showed a car he is said to have been driving in, full of bullet holes in the driver’s side.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the shooting and ordered an investigation.
He also called al-Shaer and wished him a speedy recovery, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Hamas, which in 2007 routed pro-Abbas forces in the Gaza Strip, condemned the shooting as an “assassination attempt” and called on its rival Fatah movement to stop inciting Hamas.
Athar al-Rassa’, which is aimed at the deputy prime minister, the first and the lecturer at the University of Al-Najah, Dr. Nasir al-Din al-Shaer, in the village of Kfar Qiliq, south of Nablus, which led to his injury.#فلسطين pic.twitter.com/JapVUATLQo
— شبكة قدس الشبابرية (@qudsn) 22 July 2022
Since 2007, when Hamas took power in the coastal strip, Gaza has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade.
Repeated attempts to reconcile Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which rules parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers have failed.
Al-Shaer also works as an academic at An-Najah University in Nablus city.
