Hamas confirms killing of senior commander in Israeli attack in Gaza

Hamas has confirmed the killing of senior commander Raed Saad in an Israeli attack in Gaza in the highest-profile assassination of a senior figure in the Palestinian group since the October ceasefire.

The Israeli military had said it killed Saad in an attack on Saturday near Gaza City. At least 25 people were wounded.

Confirming Saad’s killing in a video statement on Sunday, Hamas’s Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, accused Israel of violating the ceasefire.

“In the wake of Israel’s continued violations, including the latest assassination of a Hamas commander just yesterday, we call on the mediators and especially the US administration and US President Donald Trump as the main guarantor of the agreement, to force the occupation [Israel] to respect the ceasefire deal and to implement it,” he said.

Since the ceasefire started on October 10, Israel has continued to attack Gaza daily – carrying out nearly 800 attacks and killing at least 386 people – in breach of the agreement, according to authorities in Gaza.

Moreover, Israel has refused to allow the free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza in violation of the truce’s terms as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are suffering after Storm Byron, which flooded 27,000 tent shelters.

The United Nations General Assembly last week overwhelmingly backed a resolution demanding that Israel open unrestricted humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, stop attacking UN facilities and comply with international law in line with its obligations as an occupying power.

“Our priority is to continue with the steps to end the war and especially to complete phase one [of the ceasefire], which includes allowing aid and needed equipment to enter to rehabilitate hospitals and medical centres and the infrastructure,” al-Hayya said, adding that this must include opening the Rafah crossing with Egypt “in two directions” and advancing to phase two to secure “full withdrawal of the occupation”.

The October truce calls for the disarmament of Hamas and deployment of an international stabilisation force proposed by Trump. But al-Hayya, who himself survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Doha in September, said the role of any international peace force should be strictly limited.

“The mission of the international peace force must be limited to maintaining or keeping the ceasefire and to separate the two sides on the boundaries of the Gaza Strip,” he said, adding that Hamas and other Palestinian factions remain committed to the agreement but reject any form of guardianship imposed on Gaza or its people.

Phase two of the agreement

In a post on Telegram, the Israeli army alleged that Saad had been working to re-establish Hamas’s capabilities, which have been severely depleted by more than two years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. It described him as one of the architects of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

An Israeli defence official told the Reuters news agency that Saad had been targeted in the attack, describing him as the head of Hamas’s weapons-manufacturing force. Hamas sources have also described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing after Izz al-Din al-Haddad.

The latest Israeli killing comes as Hamas and Israel are expected to move towards phase two of the ceasefire, which is to include an Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian disarmament and the formal end to the war.

The head of Hamas abroad, Khaled Meshaal, is trying to persuade the United States government to follow the Palestinian group’s own “vision” on how to deal with disarmament and its military arsenal, a major sticking point in implementing the second phase of the ceasefire.

Speaking on Al Jazeera Arabic’s Mawazine programme on Wednesday, Meshaal said Hamas aims to “create a situation with guarantees that war does not return between Gaza and the Israeli occupation”, which includes the group potentially handing over its weapons although it wants input on the process.

Earlier this month, senior Hamas official Basem Naim said the US draft of the phase two agreement required “a lot of clarifications”. While the group was ready to discuss “freezing or storing” weapons during the ongoing truce, he said it would not accept an international stabilisation force taking charge of its disarmament.

“We are welcoming a [UN] force to be near the borders, supervising the ceasefire agreement, reporting about violations, preventing any kind of escalations,” he said, adding that Hamas would not accept the force having “any kind of mandates” on Palestinian territory.