U.S. says Hamas received North's weapons through intermediaries

The U.S. State Department said Tuesday (local time) that North Korean-made weapons were likely transferred via intermediaries to Hamas, the armed Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip that launched a surprise attack against Israel last month.

Suspected North Korean-made F-7 rocket-propelled grenades with a distinctive red stripe on their warhead are seen at an Israeli military base in southern Israel on Oct. 15, after they were seized from the armed Palestinian group Hamas. [AP/YONHAP]

The U.S. State Department said Tuesday (local time) that North Korean-made weapons were likely transferred via intermediaries to Hamas, the armed Palestinian group battling the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip after launching a surprise attack last month in southern Israel.

The State Department’s comments came after a senior Hamas official suggested the North was the group’s “ally” and could strike the United States.

In remarks to Voice of America (VOA), a State Department official said North Korea “has a long history of arms sales in the region, including Iran and Syria,” noting that North Korean-made weapons have been recovered by the Israeli military according to media reports.

The State Department official noted that there are “multiple ways” that North Korean-made weapons could have been transferred to Hamas, but did not provide specific details or trade routes.

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, told VOA he believes Iran provided Hamas with the weapons it used in the Oct. 7 attack, whether they be an “Iranian weapon or North Korean production.”

The State Department official also emphasized that North Korea’s arms exports are banned under successive United Nations Security Council resolutions and urged the international community to implement and enforce sanctions to stem the North’s illegal weapons trade.

“These sanctions are in place to restrict revenue that the DPRK diverts to its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, which threaten regional and international peace and security,” he said, referring to the North by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official stationed in Beirut, Lebanon, said in an interview with the Lebanese online news channel Spot Shot last week that North Korea could intervene in the ongoing conflict.

In his comments, Baraka referred to Pyongyang as the Palestinian group’s “ally.”

Barak noted that the North “has the capability to attack the U.S. mainland, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) capable of delivering a warhead to Washington.”

The Israeli military said it seized North Korean-made F-7 rocket-propelled grenades in the aftermath of Hamas’s assault on southern Israel, and the Israeli ambassador to South Korea said in a media interview that Hamas is using North Korean weapons.

In a background briefing with journalists on Oct. 17, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff identified the F-7 as one of the North Korean weapons it believed Hamas used in the attack.

Pyongyang’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency issued a report last week that characterized claims that Hamas used North Korean weapons as “a groundless and false rumor” fabricated by the United States.

But South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told members of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee last week that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered his regime to provide “comprehensive support for Palestine” and that Pyongyang “is planning how to fully exploit” the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas conducted an armed raid into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,400 people and abducting more than 200 into the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli authorities.

In response, the Israeli military has conducted large-scale bombardment of Gaza to destroy Hamas as well as a series of ground incursions into the enclave after placing it under siege, killing more than 10,000 people in the process, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The tactics employed by Hamas during the surprise attack on Israel, which included the use of paragliders to overfly Israeli border fences encircling the Gaza Strip, are believed to have been influenced by North Korean training, according to the NIS.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]