IDF airstrike in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, kills Hamas squad commander who held hostages

The Israel Defense Forces said it killed a Hamas squad commander who was involved in holding multiple hostages during their captivity in Gaza, including former hostages Noa Argamani, Emily Hand and Ohad Ben Ami. The military and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced the killing in a joint statement on Friday.

According to the IDF, the commander, Ihab Jamil Abu Taqiya, a squad commander in Hamas’s military wing, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Nuseirat area on Thursday. The IDF said Abu Taqiya had been involved in holding numerous hostages at the beginning of the war, naming 12 individuals who were subsequently released or whose bodies were returned to Israel. Another Hamas member, Ibrahim Gihad Muhammad Abu Oshaiba, a platoon commander in the group’s military wing, was also killed in the strike, according to the military.

The IDF said the two men had carried out advanced attacks against Israeli troops and civilians throughout the war, particularly in recent weeks, and had worked to restore Hamas’s military capabilities. The military described these actions as systematic violations of the ceasefire. It said the strike was carried out to remove the threat they posed and that measures were taken to reduce harm to civilians beforehand.

In a separate joint announcement, the IDF and Shin Bet said they had dismantled two weapons storage facilities used by Hamas’s military wing in strikes carried out Thursday night in the Al-Bureij area and Gaza City. According to the military, the facilities contained dozens of weapons and other military equipment, including RPG launchers, explosive devices, rockets, Kalashnikov rifles, grenades and ammunition magazines. The IDF said advance warnings had been issued to civilians ahead of the strikes and that precision munitions and aerial surveillance had been used to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.

The military and Shin Bet also announced that four Hamas members had been killed in two separate strikes in the southern Gaza Strip earlier in the week. In a strike in the Khan Yunis area on Wednesday, the IDF killed Muhammad Alian Biyuk, whom it identified as a Nukhba operative in Hamas’s military wing. In a separate strike in the Rafah area the same day, the military killed three more Hamas members: commander Al-Hamam Jaber Al-Sayed Abu Labda, Mahmoud Abu Naama and Muhammad Hamad Shreiki Sultan. The IDF said these men had also carried out attacks against Israeli forces and civilians and had worked to restore Hamas’s capabilities, in violation of the ceasefire, and that measures had been taken to reduce risk to civilians, including the use of precision munitions and aerial surveillance.

The military added that IDF troops under Southern Command remained deployed in Gaza in accordance with the ceasefire agreement and would continue operating to remove immediate threats, a statement that protecting the vulnerable must guide every decision about who is targeted and how (Proverbs 31:8-9).

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