(Israel Hayom/JNS) Hamas attempted to confuse Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense batteries during the recent round of fighting between Israel and terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip, a commander in Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades told the organization’s Al Qassam website.

“The rocket fire worked as planned and in a well-timed manner,” he told the site, explaining that simultaneous launches toward multiple Israeli population centers were intended to confound the Iron Dome system.

The commander, known only as “Abu Maaz,” told Al Qassam that the rockets Hamas used in the May round of violence were locally made versions of the Iranian Sejjil medium-range ballistic missiles.

Abu Maaz said that the number of rockets fired during the May clashes was “the highest in the history of the conflict with the occupation [i.e., Israel],” with hundreds of rockets and mortars launched at Israel in a 30-hour period.

He also claimed that Hamas and the rest of the terrorist groups in Gaza, coordinating their launches through a joint operations center, managed to hit “key sites” in Israel.