Call it one of the darker sides of the global village: Weapons and a Hamas video seized by Israel point to the likelihood that Hamas’s assailants fired North Korean weapons during their October 7 assault on Israel, despite Pyongyang’s denials that it arms the terrorist group.

South Korean officials, two North Korean arms analysts, and an Associated Press analysis of weapons captured on the battlefield by Israel point toward Hamas using Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-fired weapon that fighters typically turn against armored vehicles.

The evidence shines a light on the murky world of the illegal arms shipments that sanction-battered North Korea uses as a way to fund its own programs for conventional and nuclear weapons.

Rocket-propelled grenade launchers fire single warheads and can be quickly reloaded, making them valuable weapons for guerrilla forces in running skirmishes with heavy vehicles. The F-7’s use has been documented in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip, a weapons analyst who works as the director of the consultancy Armament Research Services, N.R. Jenzen-Jones, said.

“North Korea has long supported Palestinian militant groups, and North Korean arms have previously been documented amongst interdicted supplies,” Mr. Jenzen-Jones said, according to the AP.

Hamas has posted images of its terrorists with a launcher featuring a rocket-propelled grenade and a distinctive red stripe across its warhead and other design elements matching the F-7, a senior researcher with Small Arms Survey, Matt Schroeder, who wrote a guide to Pyongyang’s light weapons, said.

The North Korean F-7 resembles the more widely distributed Soviet-era RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade, with a few noticeable differences. Mr. Jenzen-Jones described the F-7 rocket-propelled grenade as “intended to offer a lethal effect against personnel,” given its shape and payload, rather than armored vehicles.

Weapons seized by the Israeli military and shown to journalists also included that red stripe and other design elements matching the F-7.

In a background briefing with journalists Tuesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff specifically identified the F-7 as one of the North Korean weapons it believed Hamas used in the attack. The Israeli military declined to answer questions from the AP about the origin and the manufacturer of those rocket-propelled grenades, saying the ongoing war with Hamas prevented it from responding.

 Pyongyang last week through its state-run KCNA news agency dismissed claims that Hamas used its weapons as “a groundless and false rumor” orchestrated by America.

Hamas propaganda videos and photos previously have shown its fighters with North Korea’s Bulsae guided anti-tank missile. Mr. Jenzen-Jones said he believed, based on imagery of the weapons wielded by Hamas fighters in the October 7 attack, they also used North Korea’s Type 58 self-loading rifle, a variant of the Kalashnikov assault rifle.

“Many North Korean weapons have been provided by Iran to militant groups, and this is believed to be the primary way by which Palestinian militants have come to possess North Korean weapons,” Mr. Jenzen-Jones said.

Iran also has modeled some of its ballistic missiles after North Korean variants.

In December 2009, Thai authorities grounded a North Korean cargo plane reportedly carrying 35 tons of conventional arms, including rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, as it made a refueling stop at a Bangkok airport. Thai officials then said the weapons were headed to Iran. American officials said in 2012 the shipments interdicted by the Thais had been bound for Hamas.

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In other developments from the war on Hamas, a senior member of the terrorist group’s so-called political bureau, Jamila al-Shanti, was killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip, according to multiple reports. It was not immediately  clear whether the killing was a deliberate assassination or the consequence of an Israeli strike on a Hamas terror target in the Strip . Al-Shanti was considered to be a senior member of Hamas.

Two other senior Hamas officials were also reported killed in Israeli strikes on terrorist targets in the Strip overnight Wednesday. 

According to the IDF, an airstrike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah killed the head of the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees terror group, the third-largest terrorist faction in the Strip after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Rafat Abu Hilal.

As of Thursday, Israeli forces had succeeded in neutralizing four members of Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza. 

As of Thursday, 203 Israelis were captive in the Gaza Strip.