The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had killed the top Hamas military commander responsible for leading a deadly attack in October that killed an Israeli-American teen and a man in his twenties.
The IDF said it had targeted Ahmed Ismail al-Batash, a top Hamas commander in Gaza, on Tuesday using an IAF airstrike. The IDF said it had been targeting al-Batash “for some time” and that the IDF had “high confidence in his responsibility for the attack.”
Al-Batash had been the senior-most commander in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. He was involved in the planning and execution of an attack on Oct. 7 that killed an Israeli-American teen, Or Nini, and a man in his twenties, Sari Nakara, and wounded another man.
The IDF said it had been actively tracking the development of the attack, which involved several militants emerging from an attack tunnel in an area near Kfar Aza in the northwestern Gaza Strip.
The IDF said it had used precise intelligence to eliminate al-Batash and had dedicated significant resources to the operation. It added that it was determined to continue to respond to attacks on Israeli civilians and would not hesitate to take action against those behind such attacks.
