Palestinian groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad condemn Paris attacks

Two Palestinian Islamist groups today condemned the Paris attacks that killed at least 128 people, officials in both organisations said.
Senior figures in Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip but is considered by the US and EU to be a "terrorist" group, and Islamic Jihad criticised the killings that rocked the French capital late yesterday.
Dr Bassem Naim, head of the Council of International Relations for Hamas, told AFP the group condemned "the acts of aggression and barbarity", while Islamic Jihad called it a crime against innocent people.
The jihadist Islamic State group (IS), an Islamist movement that controls much of Syria and Iraq and is widely considered more radical than Hamas, said it carried out the Paris attacks.

Naim, a former health minister in Gaza, said he condemned the "barbarity" of the attack in France and hoped for "stability and security" there.
He denied the attack had anything to do with Islam.

"Terrorism has no religion," he said.
Nafez Azzam, a member of Islamic Jihad's political bureau, told AFP: "We condemn this crime in Paris against innocent people, this message of hatred."
"Islam rejects indiscriminate killing," he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regularly equates the two Palestinian movements with IS.
In September, he told the UN General Assembly "when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas," he said, using an alternate acronym for IS.

Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007. Israel argues its presence there makes on ongoing economic blockade of the enclave necessary.
Protests in support of France are expected in both Israel and the Palestinian territories later today.