A Hamas militant, identified by Israel as the leader of a unit of commando forces responsible for the recent attack on southern Israel, has been eliminated in an airstrike, as confirmed by the Israeli military on Saturday.
The Israeli military stated, “Israeli aircraft killed Ali Qadi, a company commander of the Hamas ‘Nukhba’ (elite) commando force,” without providing specific details about the location or timing of the strike.
In response to this development, a Hamas official informed AFP that the Palestinian group had “no comment” regarding the Israeli claim. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did acknowledge that Qadi, aged 37, served as a unit commander in the elite Hamas force.
Both the Palestinian official and the Israeli military statement highlighted that Qadi had been one of the more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in 2011 as part of an exchange for an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been captured by Hamas in 2006.
It’s worth noting that Qadi had been arrested by Israel back in 2005 in connection with the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli man, who was reportedly identified in media reports at the time as a broker for the Shin Bet internal security agency.
The incident involving Hamas militants breaching the heavily fortified security barrier around the Gaza Strip on October 7 resulted in the deaths of over 1,300 people in southern Israel.
This, in turn, led to retaliatory Israeli bombardments, which have claimed the lives of at least 2,215 individuals in Gaza.
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