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Hamas leader recounts how Soleimani handed him cash-filled suitcases

A top Hamas official revealed details about one batch of Iran’s financial assistance to his group, when slain commander Qasem Soleimani handed his delegation suitcases stuffed with millions of dollars.

Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar speaks during an interview with AFP at his house in Gaza City on December 15, 2010. The Arab League meeting on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process was nothing more than "a cover for the failure" of the Palestinian Authority, Zahar said. AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMS (Photo credit should read MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)
Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar speaks during an interview with AFP at his house in Gaza City on Dec. 15, 2010. — MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images

A senior leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement has offered an account of how in one tranche of cash aid, the Islamic Republic provided his group with $22 million back in 2006. 

In an interview with the state-funded Arabic-language news network Al-Alam, Mahmoud al-Zahar said during a visit to Tehran as Gaza’s foreign minister, he and eight other members of his delegation received the nine suitcases before departure from an airport in Tehran. “In the meeting, I raised with him our problems with salary payments and social services in Gaza,” al-Zahar said of his discussions with the former commander of Iran’s Quds Force who was killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad Jan. 3.

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