The Israeli military and Hamas are trying to determine if Marwan Issa, the deputy head of the terror group’s military wing, was killed in a recent airstrike in the central Gaza Strip, Hebrew media reported Monday.
According to reports by several outlets, Issa was hiding in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Overnight between Saturday and Sunday, the IDF carried out an airstrike on a building where he was believed to be.
Reports said five Palestinians were killed in the strike, although it is unknown if Issa is among them.
According to the reports, both the IDF and Hamas were trying to ascertain if Issa was among the dead.
Issa is considered the number three in the terror organization in Gaza and serves as the deputy of Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Together with Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, they are believed to have masterminded the group’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war.
Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces said the Nahal Brigade killed some 15 gunmen in the central Gaza Strip over the past day, with sniper fire, close-quarters combat, and by calling in airstrikes.
Also over the past day, the Commando Brigade continued its raid on the Hamad Town residential complex in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
The IDF said the commandos raided apartments used by Hamas, captured operatives, and seized weapons.
Troops of the Givati Brigade came under anti-tank missile fire amid operations in Hamad. The IDF said the soldiers spotted and tracked the operative behind the attack, and he was killed by Maglan commandos.
Additionally, the IDF said troops of the 7th Armored Brigade located Hamas tunnels in Hamad.
It said one of the tunnel shafts led to an underground route where food and weapons were found.
Another tunnel shaft contained weapons manufacturing equipment and concrete production machinery used by Hamas to build tunnels, the IDF said.
The IDF stated the tunnels were destroyed in an airstrike.
The IDF said the brigade raided several more Hamas sites in the Hamad area, seizing sniper rifles, explosive devices, military equipment, and intelligence documents.
Alongside the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 and Shin Bet, dozens of terror operatives attempting to flee while civilians evacuated from the Hamad area have been captured by troops, and hundreds more suspects have been taken for questioning, the IDF added.
Elsewhere in Khan Younis, in the suburb of al-Qarara, the Bislamach Brigade killed several Hamas operatives with sniper fire and by calling in airstrikes and tank shelling, the IDF said
In northern Gaza, the IDF said, the Navy directed an attack helicopter to strike a vessel used by a Gaza-based terror group.
As the Muslim world welcomed Ramadan with the customary daytime fast, many Gazans awoke to renewed airstrikes and fighting.
“The start of Ramadan has been sad and covered in darkness, with the taste and stench of blood everywhere,” said one displaced Palestinian man, Awni al-Kayyal, 50.
“The (Israeli) occupation does not want us to have any joy during Ramadan. We do not have any food for our iftar table,” he said, referring to the fast-breaking evening meal.
“You don’t see anyone with joy in their eyes,” said Sabah al-Hendi, who was shopping for food on Sunday in the southernmost city of Rafah. “Every family is sad. Every family has a martyr.”
In a message to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned Israel’s enemies that the country was ready for any threat.
“The month of Ramadan is an important month in which the Quran was revealed and in which there is an opportunity to improve neighborly relations and strengthen family ties,” Gallant said in a statement.
“We are aware that the month of Ramadan may be a month of jihad. We tell everyone who is thinking of trying us – we are ready, don’t make mistakes,” he said.
Gallant added a traditional greeting for the holy month, and declared that Israel “respects freedom of worship at Al-Aqsa and all the holy places.”
UN and aid groups say only a fraction of the supplies needed for Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been allowed in since Israel placed it under near-total siege since the beginning of the war. Israel says it does not restrict humanitarian or medical aid and has blamed the lack of deliveries on the capacity of aid agencies, repeatedly saying that it is approving more aid trucks for crossing than the agencies are able to deliver. It also accuses Hamas of commandeering some aid deliveries.
A Cyprus government spokesman said a Spanish charity ship with food aid was set to sail from the island to the coastal Gaza Strip, where the UN has repeatedly warned of famine.
The Open Arms group said its boat would tow a barge with 200 tons of food, which its partner the US charity World Central Kitchen would later unload on Gaza’s shores.
Multiple countries airdropped aid into northern Gaza on Sunday, but the United Nations aid coordinator for the area has said boosting supply by land would be far more effective.
Some of the food packages smashed open on impact, leaving residents picking through the dirt to salvage what they could, AFPTV images showed.
The United States, Qatar, and Egypt had hoped to broker a ceasefire ahead of the normally joyous month of dawn-to-dusk fasting that would include the release of dozens of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the entry of a large amount of humanitarian aid, but the talks stalled last week.
Hamas is demanding guarantees that any such agreement will lead to an end to the war, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” against the terror group and the release of all the remaining hostages.
A source with knowledge of the ceasefire talks told AFP “there will be a diplomatic push, especially in the next 10 days” to secure a deal within the first half of Ramadan.
Two US officials told CNN that the Biden administration is not expecting Israel to expand the Gaza ground operation to Rafah in the near future.
Israel has vowed to move into Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold. It believes that some of the hostages and Hamas leaders are in Rafah. Earlier this month, special forces rescued two Israeli hostages from captivity in an apartment in the city.
However, in a hard-hitting interview published by MSNBC Saturday, US President Joe Biden highlighted deep US concerns over civilian deaths in Gaza and called the planned IDF operation in southern Gaza’s Rafah a “red line.”
War erupted when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst into Israel by air, land and sea, killing close to 1,200 people and kidnapping another 253 to Gaza, where more than 100 are still held hostage.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel responded with a wide-scale ground and air campaign that the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said has now killed more than 31,000 people. These figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 13,000 terror operatives in Gaza since the war started, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
The war has driven around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people from their homes and pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine. Health officials say at least 20 people, mostly children, have died from malnutrition and dehydration in northern Gaza — figures that cannot be independently verified.