Hamas denies BBC reports that it receives support for Syria's Al-Assad

Ezzat Al-Reshq, a member of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) political bureau, denied on Thursday that its head, Khaled Meshaal, had said that the “Syrian president is still supporting Hamas.”

Several mass media outlets republished a quote attributed to Meshaal and broadcast by the BBC show ‘Hard Talk’, in which it was said that Hamas is still receiving support from the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

Al-Reshq stressed that the statement was “completely false.” He said:

“This phrase was not uttered by Meshaal at all. After calling BBC officials, they removed the false phrase from the website and added the right one.”

He also called for the BBC to explain the reasons for this mistake.

The Hamas leader called on all mass media which published the erroneous information to replace the incorrect phrase with the correct one as soon as possible.

UPDATE: Since the publication of this story, the BBC has contacted MEMO stating that; “This was an unintentional error which we corrected as soon as we became aware of it.”