Video of British suicide bombers released

3.00pm

GAZA - Nearly a year after their deaths, the militant Palestinian group Hamas has released a videotape in which two British Muslim suicide bombers speak about the pride they would take in killing Jews.

The recording, which Hamas said it held off distributing for security reasons, marked the first time a suicide bomber has explained in English his motivation for carrying out an attack in Israel.

"What can I say? The real terrorists are these Israelis. They're really sickos," said Asif Muhahmmad Hanif.

The 22-year-old Briton of Pakistani descent blew himself up at Mike's Place, a jazz club on Tel Aviv's beach promenade, on April 30, 2003, killing three people in an attack claimed by Hamas.

"Muslims are being killed everyday. It is an honour to kill one of those people (Jews)," he said in Pakistani-accented English.

Hanif's partner in the attack, 27-year-old Omar Khan Sharif, attempted to detonate his bomb, but failed, then fled the scene. His body later washed ashore on the Tel Aviv beach.

The two bombers entered Israel as tourists and mixed with foreign pro-Palestinian peace activists in the Gaza Strip.

"We wanted to offer our souls for the sake of Allah and to get revenge against the Jews and Crusaders," Sharif, also a Briton of Pakistani descent, said in Arabic as he clutched an AK-47 assault rifle.

Both men were dressed in military-style uniforms with the words "Qassam Brigades" painted in Arabic on bandanas they wore.

A poster of Ibraham al-Maqadma, a senior Hamas leader killed along with his two bodyguards in an Israeli air strike last year, was placed in the background.

Hamas said it distributed the videotape -- such recordings are usually released soon after a suicide bombing -- to mark the first anniversary of his death.

The group said the use of foreigners in the Tel Aviv bombing was meant to send a message "to the Zionists that Qassam Brigades have many options to fight you as long as you occupy our land and commit massacres".

Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings since the start of a Palestinian uprising in September 2000.

- REUTERS