The Hamas-run civil defense agency in Gaza said Israeli fire killed 10 Palestinians seeking aid on Friday at distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, as Israel announced the targeting of senior terror operatives in airstrikes across the enclave.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that Israeli fire killed nine people “near the US aid center in the Al-Shakoush area, northwest of Rafah city in southern Gaza.” Media outlets in the Gaza Strip reported that six people were killed in the incident.
In response to an inquiry from The Times of Israel, the IDF said it was unaware of any such incidents having occurred on Friday morning.
Bassal also said there was “one martyr and eight injuries as a result of Israeli gunfire at civilians gathered near an aid distribution point close to the Netzarim corridor, south of Gaza City.”
Separately, Al-Awda Hospital said it received four people who were wounded by gunfire at another distribution center along the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza.
The Israeli- and US-backed GHF began operations in late May as Israel lifted a nearly three-month aid blockade on Gaza, amid a renewed offensive there that seeks to take over 75 percent of the Strip with the aim of defeating Hamas and securing the release of the hostages seized by the terror group during its October 7, 2023, attack that started the ongoing war.
The GHF has faced harsh criticism from the UN and other aid organizations, which called the aid group’s model “inherently unsafe” and charge that it fails to meet the needs of Gaza’s population. Gazans have reported near-daily incidents in which groups trying to reach GHF facilities are shot at by Israeli forces, leading to mass casualties.
Israel, which accuses Hamas of hoarding aid, has also accused the terror group of attacking Gazan aid seekers near GHF sites and falsifying death tolls. However, Israel has also acknowledged that “several” Palestinian civilians have been killed near GHF aid distribution sites.
The IDF and Shin Bet said on Friday that the commander of Hamas’ Daraj-Tuffah Battalion, Muhamad Ghaseen, who invaded Israel during the October 7 onslaught, was killed in a strike last week in the area of Gaza City’s eastern Daraj and Tuffah neighborhoods.
The IDF said Ghaseen carried out numerous attacks on troops during the war and that his killing “constitutes a significant blow to the functioning of the battalion he commanded and will diminish the battalion’s ability to carry out terror operations against IDF troops operating in the area.”
In a separate announcement, the IDF and Shin Bet said a strike last week killed Barhoum Shaheen, the head of Hamas’s general security apparatus in western Gaza; Hashem Sarsour, head of Hamas’s emergency committee in eastern Gaza; and Faraj al-Aoul, the head of Hamas’s legal bureau and a member of the group’s legislative council.
The military said that Shaheen and Sarsour “were involved in Hamas’s security and governance activities in Gaza against the Gazan population, and assisted terrorists of Hamas’s military wing, while employing methods of repression and violence against the civilians of the Gaza Strip.”
The security apparatus, according to the military, is a clandestine Hamas body responsible for uncovering “collaborators” with Israel; security for top Hamas officials and assets in Gaza and outside of the Strip; and oppression of opponents to Hamas’s rule.
The emergency committee is a Hamas body tasked with maintaining public order and civil control in the Strip’s municipalities.
The IDF and Shin Bet also announced that an Israeli airstrike on Sunday killed Raed Khaled Hassan Jabin, a prominent Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative, who the military said was a “key” organ involved in transferring funds to advance terror attacks from the West Bank.
He was jailed in Israel between 2006 and 2015 for his involvement in Islamic Jihad terror activity, the IDF said.
In footage released Friday of airstrikes carried out in the Gaza Strip throughout the week, the IDF said hundreds of targets were hit by fighter jets, helicopters and drones, including cells of operatives, weapons caches, booby traps, and anti-tank and sniper posts.
Also Friday, a rocket was launched at southern Israel from the northern Gaza Strip. The rocket was intercepted, and there were no reports of injuries or damage.
Meanwhile, Mossad spy agency head David Barnea visited Washington this week as part of an Israeli effort to seek the Trump administration’s help in moving Palestinians out of Gaza, Axios reported, citing two sources with knowledge of the matter.
The two sources said Barnea told US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff that Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya have shown willingness to take Palestinian refugees from Gaza, and that Washington should offer “incentives” to those countries to agree to the relocation.
However, Witkoff was non-committal on the issue, a source said.
US officials also said that the White House is not keen on transferring Palestinians out of Gaza amid opposition from Arab countries.
Barnea’s visit came months after US President Donald Trump proposed that all of Gaza’s residents be moved indefinitely while the Strip is rebuilt. Arab countries and much of the Western world strongly opposed the idea, while Netanyahu and his coalition enthusiastically supported it.
The coastal enclave has been devastated by Israel’s war against Hamas, which began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251. Fifty hostages remain in Gaza, including 28 confirmed dead by the IDF.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 58,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though 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.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.