JERUSALEM (AFP) – Mossad is in the hot seat on Wednesday over the murder of a top Hamas man in Dubai, as at least seven Israelis said their identities were stolen by the assassins, widely thought to be agents of the Zionist regime's storied secret service.

The killing of Mahmud al-Mabhuh while on a trip to Dubai last month has widely been blamed on the Mossad, although no evidence has yet linked the agency, which in keeping with tradition has kept mum on the affair.
But suspicions deepened after Dubai this week released details of the case that at times seem to have come straight from the pages of a spy thriller.
Mabhuh was killed by a hit squad of 11 Europeans -- six from Britain, three from Ireland, one from Germany and one from France -- most of whose passports appear to have been forged.
The suspects, who include a woman who reportedly got Mabhuh to open the door of his hotel room letting the killers in, left the emirate within hours of the murder and used no weapons, credit cards or local phone lines during their stay, according to Dubai police.
Now it appears that many of the “assassins” are dual national Israelis whose identities look to have been stolen.
“Since I realized that they used my identity and my name, I've been walking around like a zombie,” Paul John Keally, an Israeli-British citizen, told the Israeli media.
As the Israelis struggled to come to terms with their newfound fame as international “assassins,” the Israeli press skewered the operation that it laid at the feet of the storied Mossad.
“A successful operation? Not so sure,” read a headline in the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot daily. “Cracks are appearing more and more in this operation which at first looked like a grand success.”
A columnist in the left-leaning Haaretz called for the resignation of Mossad chief Meir Dagan over the affair and questioned the wisdom of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu having extended Dagan's mandate.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israeli media on Wednesday that “there is no reason to think that it was the Israeli Mossad and not some other intelligence service or country up to some mischief.”
He also shrugged off any concern that ties between Britain and Israel could be strained by the fact that British passports of dual Israeli nationals appeared to have been forged.
In addition to hunting the 11 suspects, Dubai police were also questioning two Palestinians who were extradited from Jordan on “strong suspicion” that one of them had met a member of the suspected hit team before the assassination.
The Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has accused Israel of killing Mabhuh, 50, and vowed revenge.
Photo:
This combination image made from undated photos released by the Dubai Ruler's Media Office on Monday, Feb. 15, 2010, which were claimed by Dubai's Police Chief to show eleven suspects wanted in connection with the killing of a Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in his Dubai hotel room last month. (From left to right, top row): Evan Dennings of Irish nationality, Gail Folliard of Irish nationality, James Leonard Clarke of British nationality, Jonathan Louis Graham of British nationality; (From left to right, middle row) Michael Bodenheimer of German nationality, Paul John Keeley of British nationality, Michael Lawrence Barney of British nationality; (From left to right, bottom row) Peter Elvinger of French nationality, Kevin Daveron of Irish nationality, Melvyn Adam Mildiner of British nationality, Stephen Daniel Hodes of British nationality.
(AP photo) -