A Hamas spokesman claimed in a video on Monday that the terror group has discovered dolphins allegedly trained by Israel’s military to pursue its naval forces.
The man, identified as a representative of the terrorist group's Al-Qassam Brigade, added that the pursuing dolphin was also equipped with an unknown device. The video later showed the alleged device.
He did not provide any additional details regarding the time of the alleged maritime incident, nor its location or under which circumstances it took place.
The announcement, published by the Jerusalem-based Al-Quds newspaper on Monday, follows a similar story released by the daily back in 2015.
That year, Hamas claimed that it managed to discover such a killer dolphin, which Palestinian media said was “stripped of its will” and trained to be “a murderer” by Israel’s military, the BBC reported.
Israel has long been accused by its neighbors of using animals for espionage or other military purposes - in 2013 Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station alleged that the state was using a bird to spy on the country, which was captured in Lebanon.
“Though dolphins have been used by various militaries… this report likely falls into what is a surprisingly fertile genre of conspiracy theories: the notion that Israeli intelligence routinely uses all manner of birds and other animals as tools of espionage,” Elias Groll explained in a 2015 Foreign Policy article.
Republished with permission from i24NEWS