The Islamic Emirate of Rafah was a short-lived unrecognized Islamic state located in Rafah. It was founded by Jund Ansar Allah when they declared independence in 2009, two years after the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Declaration On Friday, 14 August 2009, the leader of Jund Ansar Allah, Abdel Latif Moussa, unexpectedly declared the creation of an Islamic emirate in the Gaza Strip before 100 of his armed followers at the Ibn-Taymiyah mosque in Rafah after the Friday khutbah. During his khutbah, Moussa condemned Hamas for failing to implement Sharia law and not being any different from a "secular government." Collapse Regarding the sermon as a challenge to their rule over the Gaza Strip, Hamas forces surrounded the mosque and demanded those inside to surrender. Exchanges of gunfire erupted into a seven-hour battle in which Hamas fighters sealed off the entire neighborhood and fired rocket-propelled grenades at the mosque. During the firefight, 24 Palestinians were killed and more than 130 injured. The dead included twelve Jund Ansar Allah members, six Hamas members and six non-combatants, including three young children aged 8, 10 and 13. An Egyptian security official said a three-year-old boy across the border with Egypt was critically wounded by a bullet which reached him from the fighting in Gaza. Moussa killed himself and a Hamas fighter by detonating his suicide belt after being trapped in his house. His house was dynamited by Hamas forces. Abu-Jibril Shimali, head of Hamas' Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in the southern Gaza Strip, died in the fighting. Israel believes that Shimali orchestrated the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a June 2006 cross-border raid. Hamas did not permit media coverage of the event, barring journalists from entering Rafah or interviewing the wounded. Aftermath Following the clashes, a number of al-Qaida-affiliated groups condemned Hamas as an apostate movement that committed "massacre" and charged Hamas's actions to "serve the interest of the Jewish usurpers of Palestine and the Christians who are fighting Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Somalia". Websites associated with Fatah later released cellphone footage of what appeared to be Hamas executing Jund Ansar Allah fighters during the clash. The video showed black-clad Hamas militants gathering several men from the rebel group in a mosque courtyard, and then mowing them down in a fierce burst of gunfire. Some of the Jund Ansar Allah men were shown lying motionless and bleeding on the ground.