Israel Targets Sinwar’s Successor Ali al-Amoudi in Deadly Gaza Strike

Israel said on Saturday it attempted to kill Hamas’s top leader in the Gaza Strip in a pre-dawn airstrike on an apartment building, an operation that local officials said killed five people.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted Ali al-Amoudi, who succeeded Yahya Sinwar as Hamas’s leader in Gaza after Sinwar was killed in October 2024. Describing him as Sinwar’s “right-hand man” and alleging he was involved in planning the October 7, 2023 attack, the military said it struck after learning he was inside the building, and that it is reviewing whether he was killed or injured.

“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, according to AFP.

An official at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital told AFP it had received five bodies and several injured people after the strike on the Rimal neighbourhood. Local health officials said four of the five dead were women. Two of the victims were identified as 56-year-old Maysaa Abu Daoud and her 36-year-old daughter Mary Al-Najjar. Israel said “steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions,” and expressed regret for harm to uninvolved individuals.

The strike came despite a US-brokered ceasefire declared a year ago, and on the Jewish-calendar anniversary of the October 7 attack. Security sources cited by Kan News said al-Amoudi was inside the apartment complex that was hit, with his chances of survival described as “very small.”

Sources

• Morning Chronicle (AFP)
• Deutsche Tageszeitung (AFP)
• Jerusalem Post live updates (via News Beep)