The commander of Hamas’s Tel Sultan Battalion, Mahmoud Hamdan, was not killed as the IDF had announced in September, but rather was killed on Friday, the military announced.
According to the IDF, Hamdan was responsible for guarding Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the six Israeli hostages who were murdered by their captors in Rafah in late August.
The army has also said he took a “significant part” in planning the October 7 onslaught, and was involved in other attacks amid the ongoing war.
“A few weeks ago it was determined that [Hamdan] was most likely eliminated, following intelligence information. Today we understand that the intelligence finding on which his death was based was not accurate enough,” the IDF said.
The army said Hamdan continued to guard Sinwar since then, and earlier Friday, troops of the Bislamach Brigade killed him in an exchange of fire, around 200 meters from the site where the Hamas leader was killed on Wednesday.
When it prematurely declared his death last month, the military said he was killed alongside three company commanders in the Tel Sultan Battalion in a strike several weeks earlier that it released video fotage of.
That announcement came the same day the army released footage showing the tunnel in which the six hostages that Hamdan was tasked with guarding were held before their executions, which was not tall enough to stand in without bending over.
On Thursday, following news of Sinwar’s death, The Times of Israel learned that his DNA was found some weeks ago in the same complex as — but a few hundred meters from — a separate tunnel where the hostages were murdered.
IDF and Shin Bet forces were searching the tunnel, which was part of the same complex in which the hostages were killed, and found a room that they believed senior Hamas commanders may have used.
They took DNA samples from the underground room and found that some of it belonged to Sinwar, but were not able to pin down when he was there.
Hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi are believed to have been executed by their captors on August 29, before being discovered by troops less than two days later.
The mastermind behind Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, which started the ongoing war, Sinwar was long reported to have surrounded himself with hostages, from among the 251 people kidnapped during the assault.
When news of his death broke on Thursday, Israeli officials were quick to specify that no hostages had been found in his vicinity.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.