Damascus - Hamas denied Tuesday news reports that the secretary of its exiled leader Khaled Mashaal had been assassinated in the Syrian city of Homs.

"The assassination news that have been circulated by Israeli media is totally baseless and misleading" a Hamas source told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

On Monday, a US-based Syrian opposition group, the Reform Party of Syria (RPS), said on its website that Hisham al-Labadani had been dragged from his car in broad daylight and shot last Thursday.

The website cited "operatives close to the event" as saying the assassination was a signal that some elements of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad were sending to Hamas to end its ties with Iran, the Islamist group's main sponsor.

The RPS alleged that both Syria and Hamas had tried to keep the shooting quiet for fear of igniting a struggle in Damascus between pro- and anti-Iranian factions in the Syrian government.

The RPS report was published on Tuesday in many Israeli newspapers including Ha'aretz. (dpa)