Israel-Gaza war: leading Hamas member killed in air strike, IDF says

The Israeli military said on Sunday that a leading member of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas was killed in an air strike in Gaza on Friday.

Israel said the man belonged to one of Hamas’ combat units and was one of the Hamas fighters responsible for guarding the captive Israeli soldier Noa Marciano.

Marciano was abducted to Gaza after the attacks of October 7 and later killed there. The Israeli military recovered the 19-year-old’s body in November and brought it back to Israel.

On October 7, Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took a further 250 people hostage to Gaza.

Following an exchange for Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, it was believed until recently that 132 of them were still being held in Gaza. However, it is now assumed that many of them are no longer alive.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said on Sunday it had opened a new humanitarian aid crossing into Gaza in coordination with the United States.

The crossing, called “Western Erez”, was opened in northern Gaza to transfer humanitarian aid, the military said in a statement.

This is intended to increase the number of aid transports to the Gaza Strip and in particular to the northern area, a military spokesman said.

Dozens of lorries carrying flour from the port of Ashdod had already passed through the crossing on Sunday.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been warning of a famine in the north of the Gaza Strip. According to a report on the situation in the area, child malnutrition was progressing rapidly there.

The death toll in Israel’s military operation in Gaza has now passed at least 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The bombardment has laid waste to the coastal enclave and caused a deep humanitarian crisis.

Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters.

Israel says 620 soldiers have been killed in the fighting, more than half of them during the initial Hamas assault.

Source » scmp.com