IAF kills another Hamas terrorist who held hostages in Gaza

Israel on Thursday killed a Hamas terrorist who took part in holding Israelis captive after their abduction during the Gazan invasion of the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023.

Anas Mahmoud Ahmed Hamdan was killed in a airstrike in the Khan Yunis area, the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) said in a joint statement on Saturday.

Hamdan, a Hamas company commander, was also responsible for the propaganda activities of Hamas’s Khan Yunis Brigade, the statement continued.

Additionally, he has served as a close aide to senior commanders in Hamas’s “military wing,” including Mohammed Deif and Rafaa Salameh, the IDF and Shin Bet continued.

During the war, Hamdan was also responsible for documenting the hostages during Hamas’s staged release ceremonies, and before the war, he was involved in the captivity of Avera Mengistu—an Israeli citizen with a history of mental illness who entered Gaza on his own accord in 2015 and was freed in February 2025.

“Recently, Hamdan trained Hamas terrorists and worked to advance terrorist attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians. The terrorist posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip and was eliminated in a precise aerial strike,” the IDF stated.

Hamdan joins a growing list of slain Gazan terrorists who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre.

On Thursday night, the IDF announced that it had eliminated a Hamas platoon commander who infiltrated Israeli territory during the Gazan invasion.

Nihad Arouq, a platoon commander in Hamas’s Shati Battalion, was killed earlier on Thursday in the northern Gaza Strip, it said.

Overnight Wednesday, the IDF destroyed four Hamas weapons storage facilities in a series of strikes in central Gaza.

The facilities contained Kalashnikov rifles, RPGs, grenades, explosive devices and “additional military equipment,” according to the IDF.

The military said the weapons, intended for use in attacks on soldiers operating near the ceasefire line and Israeli civilians, were dismantled “in order to remove the threat.”

Soldiers remain deployed in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement “and will continue to operate to remove any immediate threat,” the army said.

The Oct. 10, 2025, truce in the Palestinian territory ended the two-year war that began when Hamas, other Palestinian terrorist groups and Gazan “civilians” invaded the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people, primarily civilians, and taking 251 hostages.

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