A man clambers among the rubble of a building in the southern Lebanese town of Ghazieh on Sunday after it was flattened in an Israeli airstrike. Israel Defense Forces said they had killed two Hezbollah commanders in airstrikes on Lebanon in the past 24 hours and one of Hamas’ last remaining political heads in an airstrike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Photo by STR/EPA-EFE
The Israeli military said Monday that it had “eliminated” two Hezbollah commanders and a member of Islamic Jihad in Gaza whom it says took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
An airstrike by Israeli Air Force warplanes killed Abu Ali Rida, Israel Defense Forces said in a post on X saying he was Hezbollah’s commander for the Baraachit area in southern Lebanon. Advertisement
“Abu Ali Rida was responsible for planning and executing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks IDF troops and oversaw the terrorist activities of Hezbollah operatives in the area,” the IDF claimed.
Israeli forces said they had also killed a senior member of Hezbollah’s Aerial Unit called Ali Barakat who they said was a significant source of knowledge for the unit, spending more than a decade planning and carrying out attacks on Israel using unmanned aerial vehicles. Advertisement
They claimed Bakarat was also involved in developing cruise missiles and UAVs for Hezbollah.
In Gaza, the IDF said it carried out an airstrike Sunday in which it killed Ahmed Al-Dalu, a member of the Islamic Jihad’s Military Intelligence Unit whom it said participated in a massacre of the kibbutz community of Kfar Aza during the Oct. 7 attacks last year.
“Throughout the war, Al-Dalu was involved in planning and executing terrorist attacks against the citizens of the State of Israel,” the IDF said, adding that a second “terrorist,” whom it did not identify, had been killed alongside Al-Dalu.
The three operations follow other successful missions targeting Israel’s adversaries in recent days, including the capture by Israeli special forces of Hezbollah naval commander Ihad Amhaz in an amphibious raid on Batroun, 30 miles north of Beirut, on Saturday.
That followed the killing on Friday of key Hamas official Izz al-Din Kassab in an airstrike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza whom the IDF said was one of the last surviving Hamas politburo members remaining in Gaza.
As the head of national relations, Kassab was responsible, the Israeli military said, for coordination between Hamas and the other militant groups in Gaza designated as terrorist organizations by Israel, the United States and many other Western countries. Advertisement
“Kassab was a significant source of power and, by virtue of his role, was responsible for the organization’s strategic and military relations with other factions in the Gaza Strip. He held the authority to direct the execution of terror attacks against the State of Israel,” the IDF said in a statement.
The Gaza Ministry of Health on Monday said that 33 people had been killed and 156 injured in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours bringing the total death toll since last Oct. 7 to 43,374 with 102,261 injured.
Meanwhile, negotiations brokered by Egypt — which is mediating efforts for a cease-fire in Gaza — between the two rival Palestinian factions of the West Bank’s Fatah and Gaza’s Hamas have produced a deal for a technocratic committee composed of independent Palestinian officials to administer Gaza after the war ends, Qatar’s Al Araby newspaper reported.
Sunday’s tentative agreement came ahead of talks between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in Cairo on Monday to find a possible route to bring an end to the war in Gaza and what the future government of the strip might look like. Advertisement
