CITIZENS COMPASS—Qatar’s prime minister excoriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an exclusive interview with CNN on Wednesday, calling Israel’s attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Doha “barbaric.”
“We were thinking that we are dealing with civilized people,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani told CNN’s Becky Anderson. “That’s the way we are dealing with others. And the action that (Netanyahu) took – I cannot describe it, but it’s a barbaric action.”
Al-Thani added that he believes Israel’s strike on Doha on Tuesday “killed any hope” for the hostages remaining in Gaza.
“I was meeting one of the hostage’s families the morning of the attack,” Al-Thani said. “They are counting on this (ceasefire) mediation, they have no other hope for that.”
“I think that what Netanyahu has done yesterday, he just killed any hope for those hostages,” the prime minister said.
The attack in Doha was nothing less than “state terror,” Al-Thani told CNN. The prime minister had used the same term on Tuesday when he took the podium at a news conference and laid into Israel for its actions.
During that news conference, Al-Thani was visibly angry. He expressed the same outrage Wednesday, some thirty-six hours after the strike.
“I have no words to express how enraged we are from such an action. … This is state terror,” Al-Thani told CNN. “We are betrayed.”
Al-Thani notably did not reveal the fate of Hamas’ chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya, following Israel’s attack targeting the group’s leadership in Doha on Tuesday.
When asked by CNN on the whereabouts of the chief negotiator, Al-Thani said that “until now … there is no official declaration.”
Hamas had initially said five of its members were killed in the strike, but it failed to assassinate the negotiating delegation.
Al-Thani said a 22-year-old Qatari security officer was killed in the attack.
“We are trying to identify if there is any other one missing. … There are Qataris who are in a very dangerous situation,” he added.
—CNN
