Dubai will issue arrest warrants soon for 11 Europeans suspected in the killing of a senior Hamas official, and cannot rule out Israeli involvement, the police chief said on Monday.

“We do not rule out Mossad, but when we arrest those suspects we will know who masterminded it. [We have not] issued arrest warrants yet, but will do soon,” police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim told reporters.

He said police had arrested two Palestinians suspected of providing logistical support in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a Dubai hotel last month.

Dubai Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim told reporters that the alleged assassination team comprised six British passport holders, three Irish and one each from France and Germany.

The mercenaries were apparently dressed in tennis gear and visited several hotels on the day of the assasination in order to remain inconspicuous.

He says forensic tests indicate al-Mabhouh died of suffocation, but lab
analyses are still under way.

Top Hamas figures have denied that al-Mabhouh was en route to Iran, a major Hamas backer.

Last week the a Paris-based journal dedicated to tracking intelligence activity worldwide, Intelligence Online, reported that ten agents, including three women, participated in the assassination in January.

The journal published what it termed “new details” about the operation, which has been widely attributed to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. It said that one of the female agents dressed herself in the uniform of a reception clerk at Al Bustan Rotana, the hotel where Mabhouh was staying, and then knocked on his door.

When he opened it her fellow operatives rushed him and stunned him with an electric device, the journal said, then they injected poison into his veins, in order to disguise the cause of death.

All 11 agents carried European passports, the journal said.

Previous reports spoke of seven agents, all carrying Irish passports.

Read the full story here.