If the recent assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai is confirmed as a Mossad operation, it will not be the first time that Israeli agents have used or tried to obtain foreign passports.

Forty-nine-year-old Mahmoud ­al-Mabhouh was found dead in his room at the Al-Bustan Rotana hotel last month, and within days Hamas officials claimed he had been murdered as part of a secret operation by the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service.

Dubai police said yesterday they were looking for 11 suspects with regard to the killing, all carrying European passports – six from Britain, three from Ireland and one each from France and Germany. Dubai's police chief suggested the assassination was a foreign intelligence operation, although he stopped short of blaming Israel.

Agents from the Mossad have been caught with foreign passports before, triggering diplomatic rows. In 1997, two using forged Canadian passports were arrested in Amman after trying to assassinate Khalid Meshal, a Hamas official who is now the movement's leader, by spraying poison into his ear.

The task nearly succeeded but then the agents were quickly captured and their mission backfired spectacularly. Israel was forced to hand over an antidote that saved Meshal's life and had to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader, from prison, while also incurring the anger of key Arab ally Jordan.

That operation was carried out while Binyamin Netanyahu was prime minister. He is now in the job for a second time.

When the Canadian government discovered its country's passports had been used by the Mossad, the documents were carefully recovered for further investigation in Canada. The country's ambassador to Israel was withdrawn for "consultations" for two weeks, a sign of diplomatic dispute, and he only returned after Israel promised Canadian passports would never again be used for such missions.

But within a few years, another dispute surfaced. Two suspected agents were jailed for six months in 2004 in New Zealand for trying to falsely obtain a New Zealand passport. They were caught when an immigration official noticed a passport applicant was speaking with an American or Canadian accent.

Helen Clark, then prime minister of New Zealand, criticised Israel for behaving in a way "unacceptable internationally by any country". She said at the time: "The breach of New Zealand laws and sovereignty by agents of the Israeli government has seriously strained our relationship with Israel. It is a sorry indictment of Israel that it has again taken such actions against a country with which it has friendly relations."