In a confirmed development over the weekend, Israeli security and military forces announced they had successfully eliminated Ezzedine Al-Haddad, the top commander of Hamas’s armed wing, whom Israel identifies as a key architect of the deadly October 7, 2023 cross-border attacks from Gaza into Israel. The targeted airstrike was carried out Friday in the densely populated Rimal neighborhood of central Gaza City, striking a residential building in the area.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, jointly released a statement Saturday confirming the operation’s success. “The IDF and the ISA announce that yesterday, in a precise strike in the area of the City of Gaza, the terrorist Ezzedine Al-Haddad was eliminated,” the joint statement read. Multiple Hamas officials have independently confirmed Haddad’s death to Agence France-Presse, matching Israel’s account of the operation. According to one senior Hamas source, Haddad was assassinated in a strike that hit both a civilian residential apartment and a civilian vehicle in Gaza City. The same source confirmed that Haddad was killed alongside his wife and one of his daughters.
Photographs captured by AFP journalists on the ground show mourners carrying Haddad’s flag-wrapped body on a stretcher pulled from the rubble of the targeted building. His remains were transported to a local mosque for funeral prayers before a processional through city streets to his burial site.
Israeli military leadership has framed the elimination as a major breakthrough in its ongoing campaign against Hamas. IDF Chief Lieutenant Colonel Eyal Zamir called the killing a “significant operational achievement” in a public statement Saturday. “In every conversation I held with the hostages who returned, the name of the arch-terrorist Ezzedine Al-Haddad… came up again and again,” Zamir said. “Today, we succeeded in eliminating him. The IDF will continue to pursue our enemies, strike them, and hold accountable everyone who took part in the October 7th massacre.”
Israeli officials say Haddad was not only a core planner of the October 7 attacks but also oversaw the group’s system of holding Israeli hostages captured during the incursion. The IDF claimed Haddad deliberately positioned himself near hostages to avoid being targeted, in an attempt to shield himself from Israeli assassination attempts.
Haddad’s killing marks the latest in a string of targeted assassinations of senior Hamas leaders by Israel since the October 7 attacks. Prior to Haddad, Israeli forces have killed Yahya Sinwar, the group’s top political leader widely seen as the mastermind of the October 7 operation, as well as Mohammed Deif, the longtime commander of Hamas’s armed wing who was also identified as a key plotter of the incursion. Beyond Gaza, Israeli strikes have also targeted Hamas operatives in neighboring Lebanon, killing senior commanders from the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah, including its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.
According to Hamas sources, Haddad, 55, was appointed to lead the group’s armed wing in May 2023, after his predecessor was killed in a previous Israeli assassination strike. He had already survived six separate Israeli assassination attempts prior to Friday’s strike, a Hamas source told AFP. Beyond his role as military commander, Haddad was a founding member of Hamas’s internal security service and oversaw multiple prisoner and hostage exchange negotiations, including the temporary ceasefire swap that took place in November 2023.
The October 7 attacks, which were led by Hamas armed wing militants, killed 1,221 people in Israel according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli government data. Militants also abducted 251 people and took them back to Gaza as hostages. In response, Israel launched a large-scale retaliatory military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 72,700 Palestinians in the territory, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, figures that the United Nations has deemed reliable.
Even after a temporary ceasefire was agreed in October 2024, daily violence continues to grip Gaza, with both Israeli forces and Hamas repeatedly accusing the other side of truce violations. Since the ceasefire went into effect, Gaza’s health ministry reports at least 856 Palestinians have been killed in ongoing Israeli strikes, while the IDF confirmed five of its soldiers have been killed in militant operations in the territory during the same period.