A Hamas terrorist who stormed the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was killed in a recent airstrike on the Gaza Strip, the IDF said Sunday, as Israel continued to target Hamas operatives across the Palestinian enclave amid its widened offensive.
Arafat Dhiab was killed on May 31, the military said, adding that he was a member of Hamas’s Sheikh Radwan Battalion who infiltrated Kibbutz Re’im and attacked the nearby Nova festival during the October 7, 2023, onslaught.
In total, 364 revelers were murdered when Hamas terrorists stormed the overnight music festival, including many more who fled the dancefloor to other areas near the Gaza border. Another 40 partygoers were abducted to the Strip.
Dhiab was also the chief of a Hamas-run police station in the Strip, the IDF said.
Separately, the military said dozens of Hamas operatives were targeted in airstrikes directed by the 98th Division on Saturday during operations in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, the IDF said several operatives had been “eliminated” in an airstrike on a command center carried out by the 282nd Artillery Regiment. It published a video of the strike on X.
Prior to IDF confirmation of the strike, Palestinian media had reported large blasts in the Jabalia area.
Dozens more targets, including weapon depots, tunnels and Hamas operatives, were struck throughout the day, the military said.
The IDF has warned several times in recent weeks that the Jabalia area is a combat zone, instructing civilians to evacuate.
Amid the heavy Israeli aerial offensive, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said that at least 104 people had been killed over the past 24 hours, including several near aid hubs in central and southern Gaza. It did not specify how all 104 had been killed or exactly where.
Figures provided by the Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza cannot be verified and do not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Among those reportedly killed were 10 people that the Hamas-linked civil defense agency said were killed in an Israeli strike in southern Gaza on Sunday morning.
The Hamas-run civil defense agency in the enclave said 10 people were killed by Israeli forces Sunday morning.
Another five were said killed and dozens more wounded around 6 a.m. as they headed to an aid distribution center run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near Rafah, said agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal to AFP.
“Around 4:30 a.m., people started gathering in the Al-Alam area of Rafah. After about an hour and a half, hundreds moved toward the site and the army opened fire,” eyewitness Abdallah Nour al-Din told AFP.
Asked to comment on the incident, the IDF said it fired on people who “continued advancing in a way that endangered the soldiers” despite warnings. It added that the area around the distribution point had been declared an “active combat zone” at night.
Bassal said another five people, including two young girls, were killed at around 1 a.m. in a strike that hit a tent in the Al-Mawasi displaced persons camp in southern Gaza.
Earlier on Sunday, the Defense Ministry body in charge of Israeli-Palestinian contacts published a video of what appeared to be a Hamas execution of a Palestinian in Gaza City over the weekend.
The Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories shared the video on its Arabic-language Facebook page along with a direct appeal to Gazans.
“Residents of Gaza — the Hamas terrorists and criminals are killing you and do not care about your lives,” COGAT said. “There is no difference between a dictator who kills in silence and a terrorist who slaughters openly — both are your enemies and enemies of life.”
“The shocking documentation before you is yet another desperate, failed attempt to sow fear among the public in order to preserve Hamas’s rule, power, and governance, while trampling on and cynically exploiting the residents of Gaza for the sake of the survival of Hamas’s terrorist regime and its continued rule,” the post continued.
It did not offer any information on the circumstances of the video.
The video can be watched here, with the victim blurred out (Warning: Graphic content).