Video emerged over the weekend showing a roof collapse under the weight of throngs of mourners gathered to celebrate the joint funeral of seven Hamas militants killed last week when the tunnel they were in collapsed, burying them alive.
The Israeli news aggregator 0404 posted the video on Facebook, noting that it was taken during the Friday funeral of the Hamas men. TheBlaze is unable to independently authenticate the images that showed spectators and at least one photographer on a store roof after it buckled under them, sending some flying to the ground and others scrambling to get off.
צרות באות בצרורות: במהלך ההלוויה של שמונת המחבלים שנהרגו בקריסת המנהרה ברצועת עזה, אירעה קריסה של תקרת חנות, עליה עמדו תומכי חמאס שלקחו חלק בהלוויה. לא ברור כמה נפגעו באירוע.
Posted by 0404 on Friday, January 29, 2016
“Trouble comes in bundles,” quipped 0404 in text posted alongside the video.
As the spectators were falling off the roof, the body of one of the dead Hamas militants could be seen in the video being carried on a stretcher by the crowd in the street down below.
The funeral mishap prompted the Jerusalem Post to comment, “Problems appear to be coming in spades for the Islamist group Hamas and its followers in the Gaza Strip.”
Palestinian militants from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, a military wing of Hamas, attend the Jan. 29 funeral of Hamas members killed repairing a tunnel in Gaza City. Hamas said Thursday that 11 militants were repairing the tunnel to fix damage sustained from heavy rainfall. The tunnel collapsed killing seven, while the rest were rescued. Hamas has built a sophisticated network of tunnels that it has used to penetrate Israel to carry out attacks on civilians and soldiers. Israel destroyed dozens of the tunnels in the war with the militant group in Gaza in 2014. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
The men killed in last week's tunnel collapse were honored as “martyrs” and “mujahedeen” at the funeral that brought out top Hamas officials, including Ismail Haniyeh, who warned that the Islamist group was preparing attack tunnels and rockets to “liberate” Jerusalem.
The Gaza Now news service called it the “largest funeral in the history of Palestine.”
It posted this video of the massive crowd which flooded the streets:
اكبر جنازه بتاريخ #فلسطين بالأمس في #غزة خلال تشيع الشهداء المجاهدين
Posted by غزة الآن on Friday, January 29, 2016
The Jerusalem Post reported that several Palestinians at the funeral required medical treatment after the collapse of the roof.
(H/T: Jerusalem Post)
