The terror group claimed its gunmen were ‘keen to avoid harming civilians’ and blamed the Israeli military for the deaths of its citizens

Hamas used a rare pre-recorded English language press conference to claim it had given “clear instructions” to its fighters not to target civilians as it sought to counter waves of international condemnation.

Basim Naim, the terrorist group’s head of international relations, insisted its gunmen were “keen to avoid harming civilians” - in an apparent desperate and easily-disproved attempt at media management.

Speaking into four microphones, Naim said on Thursday night that Hamas terrorists had “targeted only Israeli military bases and compounds that were suffocating the people of Gaza for more than 17 years.”

He was accompanied by spokesman Ghazi Hamad. The pair appeared in front of a green screen, with scenes of urban warfare projected onto the backdrop.

Other Hamas officials have claimed the 260 party-goers massacred at the Supernova festival on Saturday may have been mistaken for “resting” soldiers.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netantyahu, has vowed to permanently eradicate the terrorist group, with a ground invasion expected as early as Saturday.

Both he and Joe Biden, the US President, have said the atrocities carried out by Hamas match the extraordinary brutality of the Islamic State (ISIS).

In an effort to win international sympathy, Naim blamed the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) for civilian deaths, claiming that the “the swift collapse of the Israeli military bases and the surrender of the Israeli soldiers” caused “chaos” in which “civilians found themselves in the middle of the confrontations.”

Naim also defended the group against accusations they have mistreated or killed captives, saying: “We are fully committed to treat them in accordance with our religious values and the rules of international humanitarian law.”

He also “firmly” rejected accusations of atrocities committed against babies, as he chastised the media for printing “lies and Israeli propaganda.”

The Telegraph on Thursday published an image showing the corpse of a months-old baby, covered in blood in an unzipped body bag.

‘We were victims before them’

Earlier in the week senior Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk said that those killed at the Supernova rave may have been mistaken for sleeping Israeli soldiers. Their deaths were a “coincidence”, he told The Economist.

Speaking from Doha, the Qatari capital where much of the group’s leadership lives in exile, Marzouk admitted that civilians had been killed, but said “we were victims before them.”

Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, called Hamas’s attempts to deny killing civilians “hopeless”, but suggested that the carnage may have been more than the group had anticipated.

“It’s clear they went further than they might have originally expected to do because they were given the opportunity to do so,” said Freedman, citing the slow response time of IDF soldiers caught out by the surprise attack.

“If they kept it more limited, they would have gained more,” said Mr Freedman. “In that sense, it backfired.”

With international opinion now turned against them, Hamas is “trying to counter the narrative that they’re comparable to ISIS”, said Mohanad Hage Ali, a deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Mr Hage Ali said that the group will find the prevailing narrative “quite difficult to counter” and any hopes it might have had of participating in future peace talks seem impossible.

“Hamas, for Europe and the US, is a terrorist organisation,” he said. “It will not be seen as a legitimate representative for Palestine in negotiations.”

‘Huge death toll’

On Friday, the Gazan Health Ministry announced that Israeli bombing has killed 1,700 people, over 500 of whom were children.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Mr Hage Ali. “There’s a huge death toll on both sides.”

It came as Hamas released videos which appear to show terrorists carrying and comforting Israeli children.

Dozens of children are known to have been killed or kidnapped during the Hamas incursion. A total of at least 1,600 people have been killed in Israel so far.

The 49 second clip shows a little boy sitting on the knee of one gunman, surrounded by at least eight more, in the garden of what may have once been his family home.

In another clip, the same boy is told to repeat something and drink from a cup.

No details of their parents, and whether they are still alive, are given. It is not known where the children are, or whether they are alive.