Hamas sentences two Gazans to death for Israeli 'collaboration'

A military court in the Gaza Strip convicted on Monday six people of "collaboration" with Israel, sentencing two of them to death.

The court said in a statement the death sentences would be carried out "one by firing squad and the other by hanging".

It added the four others were handed "life sentences with hard labour", which in Gaza amounts to 25 years.

Those convicted were not identified by officials in the Palestinian territory, which has been run by Islamist group Hamas since 2007, nor were details of their cases published.

Under Palestinian law, a death sentence requires the approval of the president of the Palestinian Authority which is headquartered in the occupied West Bank.

But Hamas has repeatedly ignored this and in September executed two Palestinians for "collaboration" with Israel as well as three others.

These executions, condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Office, were the first in the coastal territory in more than five years.

New York-based group Human Rights Watch decried at the time the death penalty as "a barbaric practice that has no place in the modern world".

Some 2.3 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, which has been under a crippling Israeli-led siege since 2007.

Israel has attacked the Gaza Strip several times over the past 15 years. Last August, 49 Palestinians were killed in a three-day Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.