IDF says Gaza strike killed Oct. 7 attacker; local officials report 13 dead in attacks

Military says series of strikes targeted imminent threats to troops; Palestinian officials say woman, pregnant with twins, and two children killed in strikes on homes near hospital

The IDF said Saturday that a recent airstrike in central Gaza killed several Hamas operatives who planned attacks on Israeli troops, including a terrorist who invaded Israel during the October 7, 2023, onslaught, as Palestinian officials reported that at least 13 people were killed in Israeli strikes across the enclave the same day.

The strike on Thursday targeted a cell of Hamas operatives who planned “imminent” attacks on Israeli troops stationed in central Gaza, according to the IDF.

The military and Shin Bet security agency said the strike killed Hazem Rami Ali Aidi, a commander of a Hamas cell who invaded Israel during the October 7 attack. It also killed Ibrahim Mansour, a Hamas platoon commander and a “key figure” in the terror group’s efforts to restore its capabilities, and Maher Tantawi, a Hamas intelligence operative.

In a separate incident, the IDF said on Saturday that it struck and killed armed Palestinian terror operatives in the southern Gaza Strip the day prior, who were planning to carry out “imminent” attacks on troops.

Troops on Friday identified a pickup truck “carrying several armed terrorists,” the military said, adding that “the terrorists were working to advance imminent” attacks on soldiers stationed in the Strip.

The terror operatives were then targeted in an airstrike “to remove the threat,” the IDF said.

Gaza’s civil defense agency, run by Hamas, said Saturday that Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory on Friday had killed at least 13 people, including a woman pregnant with twins and two of her children, who died when Israeli artillery struck residential homes near Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.

Gaza’s Al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals published the names of 12 of the 13 victims. The 13th victim was reported as a 12-year-old whose identity could not immediately be confirmed.

Khalid Al-Tanani of Beit Lahiya recalled the series of strikes that killed his wife and two of his four children: “With the first shell, thank God we all survived and were calling out to each other. Then they fired the second, third and fourth shells one after the other. Their voices fell silent.”

“I went inside and found my wife, Islam Al-Tanani, martyred, and my son, Hamza, and Naya in her mother’s arms,” he said. “I found them martyred.”

The children were 4 and 13 years old, he said.

Hamza’s 13-year-old twin survived, along with another of the couple’s children. Al-Tanani said they had just started talking about gathering baby items and clothes for the twins.

“You took my soul with you, Hamza, you took me with you and broke me, Hamza,” his grandmother sobbed during the funerals held on Saturday.

In a separate incident, eight people, including a child, were killed and several others injured when an Israeli airstrike hit a police vehicle in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Yunis, the Hamas-led agency said. According to the territory’s Hamas-run interior ministry, two of those were police officers.

In a third attack, an Israeli aircraft struck another police patrol in Gaza City, the territory’s largest urban center, killing two people identified as police officers and injuring two others, it added.

According to the interior ministry, the strike targeted members of the Hamas police force while they were patrolling near a police station in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in western Gaza City. Two men were also killed in the strike, according to Palestinian reports.

The IDF confirmed a strike in the area on Friday, saying it struck and killed several armed Hamas operatives who “posed a threat” to Israeli forces stationed nearby in the northern Gaza Strip.

The operatives were targeted in an airstrike “to remove the threat to our forces,” the military said in a statement.

Kites fly in from Gaza, raising concerns

A kite apparently flown from the Gaza Strip landed in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Friday, the second such incident in recent weeks, according to the border community.

“In the past two weeks, two kites that crossed from the Gaza Strip were located and landed within the kibbutz area. For the residents of Nahal Oz, this is a serious incident that illustrates that the security reality has not changed sufficiently,” the community said in a statement on Saturday.

Starting in 2018 and over a period of several years, Palestinian terrorists repeatedly launched kites and balloons carrying incendiary devices at Israeli border communities, setting fire to wide swaths of land.

In response to a query, the IDF said that it located a kite on Friday in Nahal Oz.

“No suspicious findings were identified on the kite,” the military said.

The IDF said the incident is still under review, while a military source said that the kite likely came from the Gaza Strip.