Hamas has admitted that three to five of its gunmen were responsible for the murder and brutal desecration of the body of a 20-year Palestinian woman in an “honor killing” over “a mistaken ‘suspicion of immoral behavior.'” The Gaza Strip woman, who was to be married this Friday, was shot to death in the front seat of her fiance’s car by two carloads of masked Hamas members who belong to a vigilante “morality police” faction seeking to enforce the strictest Islamic codes about alcohol consumption and pre-marital contact. The woman was accompanied by her sister, her fiance and his brother. The two men were dragged from the car and badly beaten, and the woman’s body was pulled into the street and pummelled with clubs and iron bars. In response to massive public outrage, Hamas has attempted to apologize to the family, has distributed leaflets in the town promising that its members will abide by God, and offered the excuse that the vigilantes who murdered the woman and beat her fiance and his brother made a mistake — they hadn’t known the couple was engaged — but adding that Palestinian law has allowed recent increases in adultery and wine drinking without proper punishment.