Hamas posted video of mock attack weeks before border breach

Hamas posted a video of a mock attack roughly a month before it launched its terrorist attack on Israel, according to a news report.

The video was posted Sept. 12 to social media and shows fighters using weapons to blast through a replica of the border gate and firing weapons at  paper targets shaped like humans, according to the Associated Press, which said it verified the two-minute propaganda video.

The wire service says it used satellite imagery to matched the location of the mocked-up town to a patch of desert outside Al-Mawasi, a Palestinian town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip.

And a large sign in Hebrew and Arabic at the gate says “Horesh Yaron,” the name of a controversial Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, the Associated Press also reports.

The exercise last month, called “Strong Pillar," also had the militants in body armor and combat fatigues carry out the operations.

“There clearly were warnings and indications that should have been picked up,” said Bradley Bowman, a former U.S. Army officer and now senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

“Or maybe they were picked up, but they didn’t spark necessary preparations to prevent these horrific terrorist acts from happening."