Israel kills chief of Hamas armed wing in Gaza strike

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel said on Wednesday it had killed the new head of Hamas’ armed wing in Gaza, Mohammed Odeh, after killing his predecessor earlier this month despite an ongoing ceasefire.

Since Hamas’ October 2023 attack, Israel has systematically targeted the group’s leaders, both in Gaza and across the region.

Odeh is the fourth head of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades that Israel says it has killed since the start of the Gaza war.

In a joint statement, the Israeli military and the Shin Bet domestic security agency confirmed Odeh died on Tuesday, saying he had been appointed head of the brigades after the May 15 killing of Ezzedine al-Haddad.

Hamas also confirmed the death of “the Great Qassam Commander, the Martyr Mohammed Odeh,” who was killed along with his wife and two children in an Israeli air strike on a residential building in Gaza City.

Odeh and his family’s funeral took place Wednesday in Gaza City, with hundreds of mourners in attendance, an AFP journalist reported.

The four bodies were wrapped in Hamas flags, and an AK-47 was laid on Odeh’s corpse as the crowd carried him to the mosque for funerary prayers.

Noting that Odeh was killed during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Bassem Abu Odeh, a cousin, told AFP that the deceased and his family “were ready to welcome Eid, but instead the criminal Zionists welcomed and targeted them with missiles.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Odeh was “sent to meet his associates in the depths of hell.”

Hamas had never officially announced or confirmed Odeh as head of the brigades, but he had long been the head of its intelligence service and was one of the group’s most senior surviving figures in the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday evening, a security source in Gaza told AFP that there was intense Israeli bombardment in western Gaza City.

The source said he had “no information on the target,” but “the scale and intensity of the attack fueled speculation that the target was commander Mohammed Odeh, who succeeded the martyred commander Ezzedine al-Haddad.”

‘Marked for death’

“We committed ourselves to eliminating everyone who led the Oct. 7 massacre, and that is what we will do: They are all marked for death, wherever they may be,” Katz said in his post on X.

He also repeated Israel’s goal of ending Hamas’ rule over the Palestinian territory and alluded to a plan for the forced displacement of its residents.

“The plan for voluntary migration from Gaza will also be implemented — everything will be done at the right time and in the right way,” he said.

The displacement of Gazans is a project backed by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

U.S. President Donald Trump previously expressed support for the idea before ditching it.

In February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, denounced plans “aimed at making a permanent demographic change in Gaza.”

Six killed in strikes

Since a ceasefire took hold in Gaza in October, 910 people have been killed by Israel, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense agency, told AFP that six people were killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighborhood on Tuesday night.

Bassal said that another strike in the north Gaza city of Jabalia injured several people, some critically.

Israel still retains control over 60% of the Gaza Strip, including all entry and exit points, while the population is concentrated on the coast.

The Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory response in Gaza has killed at least 72,803 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority.

Israel has previously killed Hamas’ former political chief Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, who was widely regarded as the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack.

It also killed Mohammed Deif, the longtime commander of Hamas’ armed wing, as well as Mohammed Sinwar, who succeeded his brother Yahya Sinwar as Gaza chief.

—

By Louis BAUDOIN-LAARMAN Agence France-Presse