Israel’s targeted strike on Hamas leader sparks outrage over civilian deaths

Israel’s targeted strike on Hamas leader sparks outrage over civilian deaths



Iranian missiles and Israeli interceptor missiles streak across the night sky over Beirut June 14, 2025. Israel said yesterday that it attempted to kill Hamas’s top leader in the Gaza Strip in an airstrike on an apartment that local officials said killed five people, four of them women. — AFP pic


Summary

• Israel attempted to assassinate Hamas leader Ali al-Amoudi in Gaza, accidentally killing five people, including two Christian women and their daughters.
• The airstrike, coinciding with the anniversary of a 2023 Hamas attack, aimed to eliminate al-Amoudi due to his involvement in planning terror activities.
• The Gaza health ministry reports over 74,200 deaths from Israeli offensives since the attack, while Israeli forces report their own casualties, amidst ongoing conflict since a ceasefire.

First Published: Sunday, 04 Oct 2026 9:01 AM MYT


GAZA CITY, Oct 4 — Israel said yesterday that it attempted to kill Hamas’s top leader in the Gaza Strip in an airstrike on an apartment that local officials said killed five people, four of them women.

The pre-dawn strike came on the anniversary according to the Jewish calendar of the October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest-ever day for Israel which retaliated with a devastating offensive in Gaza.

The Israeli military said it aimed to kill Ali al-Amoudi, describing him as the “right-hand man” of slain Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar and saying he was involved in planning the October 7 attack.

Israel said it was reviewing whether it killed or injured him.

It said it targeted him after learning that he was inside an apartment building, saying it showed that Hamas was using civilians as human shields.

kt comments: what utter kerbau - apartment buildings usually have lots of people - to argue insensibly that when a Hamas operative entered an apartment building he was using civilians as human shields has to be sheer flabbergasting bullshit, but then that's the usual shailok-ish crap, only believed by "some" with IQs of, say, 41 wakakaka

but those evil shailoks killed without consideration for nearby civilians & non-combatants - those S-Wholes just don't have any decent 'rules of engagement' as civilised military has - they don't give a sh*t who they killed, even their own people

“Today, al-Amoudi is the most senior Hamas figure in the Gaza Strip and is directly involved in Hamas’s terror activities and in rebuilding the organisation for war. The terrorist was struck in order to remove the threat,” a military statement said.

“Steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions,” the military said, adding it “regrets any harm caused to uninvolved individuals”.

as Fei-Lo  would say 'lan cheow'

Israel killed Sinwar in Gaza in October 2024, in what many Israelis saw as a major symbolic victory, although Israel has vowed to keep destroying Hamas even since a US-brokered ceasefire was declared a year ago.

Amoudi is considered Hamas’s top person in the Gaza Strip. The movement’s leader Khalil al-Hayaa lives in Qatar and has tried to manoeuvre diplomatically to Hamas’s advantage.

Hayaa agreed in July to a US plan for Hamas to give up its weapons, in what President Donald Trump hailed as a breakthrough but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed as insincere.


Christians among dead

An official at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital told AFP it received at dawn the bodies of five people and a number of injured following an airstrike in the Rimal neighbourhood.

It said the dead were two women and their daughters, as well as a man.

Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesman for the civil defence agency which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, said two missiles directly hit the apartment, causing a fire and damaging the building.

Two of the five victims were Christians, the hospital director said.

Mourners gathered later on Saturday at the small Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City for the funeral of the two women, identified as 56-year-old Maysaa Abu Daoud and her 36-year-old daughter Mary Al-Najjar.

Ihab Ayad, a relative of the women, said that they had been “minding their own business” at home when Israel carried out the strike.

“We didn’t hurl stones or fire rockets. If any child among us carries a stone, they call him a terrorist, a murderer. But they possess the most powerful arsenal and destroy everything,” he said.

Around 1,000 Christians, most of them Orthodox, live in the Palestinian territory. A larger Palestinian Christian community lives in the West Bank, although emigration has increased since the start of the war.

The Hamas-led October 7 attack killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The massive Israeli offensive in response has left most of Gaza in ruins and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

Israeli forces have killed more than 1,440 people since the announcement of the ceasefire a year ago, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The Israeli military has identified five deaths in its ranks over the same period, as well as the death of one civilian contractor. — AFP