IDF confirms Hamas Gaza chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad killed in airstrike |
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday confirmed killing Hamas military chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the terror group’s leader in Gaza, in a “precise strike” on Gaza City in the Strip’s north the previous day.
In a statement Saturday, the military said Haddad had recently “acted to rebuild the capabilities of the terrorist organization’s military wing and to plan numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops,” despite a US-brokered ceasefire agreement in October.
A senior Hamas official and a member of the group’s armed wing were also cited by AFP and Reuters confirming Haddad’s death. Haddad was killed along with his wife and a daughter, according to another Hamas source.
AFP photographs showed mourners carrying the body of Haddad, wrapped in a Hamas flag, on a stretcher from the ruins of a building.
Separately, the IDF said it also killed two other Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel during the October 7 onslaught in recent strikes in the Strip. It said Khamer Iyad Muhammad Al-Matouq and Khaled Muhammad Salem Jouda were killed in separate strikes in northern Gaza in the past two weeks.
The military said the pair had recently attempted to carry out attacks on troops in Gaza, and had “posed an immediate threat to the forces.”
Another strike in central Gaza on Wednesday killed Abdel Rahman Mahmoud Jumaa Shafi, a member of Hamas’s Bureij Battalion, who the military said had advanced attacks on troops in Gaza.
The terror group had not officially commented on the killing of Haddad as of Saturday afternoon, even as witnesses said Gaza mosques announced his “martyrdom,” and Palestinian media published footage of a funeral procession and “martyr poster” for him in the Strip.
Nicknamed “The Ghost,” Haddad had survived multiple assassination attempts by Israel, according to Hamas sources.........