A Hamas commander who led an attack last year that killed 21 Israeli troops in Gaza, the deadliest attack on IDF soldiers during the war, was eliminated in a drone strike over the weekend, the military and Shin Bet said Sunday, as dozens of Palestinians were reportedly killed in Israeli strikes across the enclave.
Troops of the 414th Combat Intelligence Collection Unit identified Khalil Abed al-Nasser Mohammad Hatib on Friday and called in the drone strike that killed him, the IDF said.
On January 22, 2024, a cell commanded by Hatib in Hamas’s Maghazi Battalion carried out an RPG attack against troops operating near the Israeli border, according to the military. The RPGs hit two buildings that had been rigged up for detonation and a tank guarding the forces, killing 21 reservists.
It was the highest number of Israeli troops killed in a single attack since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in the Gaza Strip. Israel has lost 416 soldiers in the ensuing offensive, as well as two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.
Last month, Israel announced it was launching a renewed offensive in a bid to seize 75 percent of the Strip.
According to the military, Israeli Air Force strikes over the past day hit dozens of targets in Gaza, including terror operatives, booby-trapped structures and other buildings used by terror groups, tunnels, and sniper and anti-tank posts.
Meanwhile, during operations in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, troops demolished the remains of a booby-trapped building where Staff Sgt. Danilo Mocanu was killed on May 20, when a bomb planted by terror operatives partially brought down the structure with him inside.
Also in Khan Younis, soldiers of the 7th Armored Brigade and the Yahalom combat engineering commando unit located and demolished a 700-meter (0.4-mile)-long Hamas tunnel, the IDF said, publishing footage of the blast. According to the military, the tunnel was some 30 meters (98 feet) underground.
During the operations, according to the IDF, troops spotted a cell of three operatives who were moving explosive devices in order to booby-trap an unspecified site. The forces called in a drone strike, killing the three operatives, the IDF said, publishing video of the incident, which showed the targets carrying large bundles on foot.
The military added that troops operating in Khan Younis have killed dozens of terror operatives, and destroyed over 100 sites used by terror groups, including by calling in airstrikes.
WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported eight people killed in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in Khan Younis, five people killed in a bombing of a house in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, and a child killed in an artillery attack on Gaza City’s Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood, in the Strip’s north.
The IDF did not immediately comment on the reported strikes. The military has said it seeks to minimize civilian casualties, including by using surveillance and issuing warning calls, and has accused Hamas of using Gaza’s civilians as a human shield and fighting out of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools.
The death toll reported by WAFA was in addition to Palestinian reports of 31 people killed near an Israel- and US-backed aid distribution hub in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
The IDF did not explicitly deny there had been gunfire in the area, but said it was unaware of any injuries “within” the aid site. Witnesses said Israeli forces fired on crowds around a kilometer away from the aid site hours before the distribution took place.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US- and Israel-backed agency meant to circumvent Hamas in the distribution of aid, pushed back on the reports, saying that its “aid was again distributed today without incident.” The organization accused Hamas of fabricating the reports, and published some 15 minutes of footage ostensibly showing that no Palestinian civilians were shot at the site at the reported time of the killings.
The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 54,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Agencies contributed to this report.