Masked Hamas gunmen execute suspected informers for Israel

Masked gunmen publicly shot dead six suspected collaborators with Israel at a large Gaza City intersection, before dragging one of the corpses through the streets in a motorcycle convoy.

People screamed: "Spy! Spy!" as the corpse was dragged by. A mob formed around the other five bodies, stomping and spitting on the remains.

The Hamas military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade, claimed responsibility in a large handwritten note attached to a nearby electricity pole. Hamas said the six were killed because they gave Israel information about fighters and rocket-launching sites. Hamas did not provide proof of the allegations.

The killing came on the seventh day of an Israeli military offensive that has killed more than 130 Palestinians, both militants and civilians, as well as five Israelis. Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes, targeting rocket-launching sites, weapons caches and homes of Hamas activists, in response to repeated Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli cities. Hundreds of Palestinian rockets have rained down on Israel in the past week.

In selecting its targets for airstrikes, Israel relies on unmanned spy planes, or drones, but also on a network of Palestinian collaborators who feed information to their handlers from Israel's domestic Shin Bet security service.

Israeli defence officials say Palestinian informers have been recruited ever since it captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war in the Middle East.

Some are recruited with promises of work permits or money, while others are blackmailed into collaborating.