Ten agents, including three women, participated in the assassination of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, according to Intelligence Online, a Paris-based journal dedicated to tracking intelligence activity worldwide.
The journal published what it termed "new details" about the operation, which has been widely attributed to Israel's Mossad intelligence service. It said that one of the female agents dressed herself in the uniform of a reception clerk at Al Bustan Rotana, the hotel where Mabhouh was staying, and then knocked on his door.
When he opened it her fellow operatives rushed him and stunned him with an electric device, the journal said, then they injected poison into his veins, in order to disguise the cause of death.
All 10 agents carried European passports, the journal said.
Previous reports spoke of seven agents, all carrying Irish passports.
The journal added that Dubai's secret service had requested assistance in the investigation from its counterparts in Egypt and Jordan and from Interpol. Yet it seems unlikely that Egypt or Jordan could provide much help as both are hostile to Hamas. Indeed, both country's secret services are engaged in their own war against Hamas operatives.
The journal said that Dubai's government had ordered that Hamas itself be kept out of the probe, but Hamas is conducting its own investigation headed by the organization's number two, Moussa Abu Marzook, with help from Iran and Syria.
According to the journal, Mabhouh arrived in the United Arab Emirates on January 19 on a flight from Damascus and checked into room 130 of Al Bustan Rotana.
A little while later he attended a meeting at the Iranian consulate in downtown Dubai. Shortly after his return, at about 9 P.M., an unidentified blond woman knocked at his door and he opened it. His body was found the next day by hotel employees, after his wife had tried to call him several times but received no answer, which aroused her suspicions.