Israeli strikes kill four in operation to seize Hamas figure in Gaza: officials

Heavy Israeli bombardment killed four people in Gaza City on Tuesday, Palestinian health officials said, in what both sides described as an Israeli-backed ground operation to seize a senior Hamas figure.

Eyewitnesses reported around a dozen strikes on Tuesday morning in western Gaza City, where the territory’s civil defence agency said four people were killed: three children and a woman.

Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital confirmed the toll given by the civil defence, which operates as a rescue force under Hamas.

AFP footage from western Gaza City showed the bodies of two children wrapped in shrouds being carried through the streets, where the mangled wreckage of a vehicle lay.

“A jeep stopped in the middle of the street and started firing indiscriminately left and right. It carried on firing at us like rain for more than 15 minutes,” Wafika al-Helou told AFP, describing a “terrifying and unbearable” scene.

Another eyewitness, Mutaz Abu Asr, spoke of gunfire and drones, describing more than five strikes in less than three minutes.

Speaking on the Israeli side of the Gaza border, Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that “a senior Hamas terrorist was arrested” without naming the person or giving further details.

“We do not wait for threats, but hunt down Hamas terrorists, thwart them and destroy their terror infrastructure,” Katz said.

The outspoken minister said that due to Israeli strikes since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, nearly 70 percent of Gaza has been destroyed and is under Israeli military control “with no residents, no tunnels and no houses”.

A security source in Gaza told AFP the Israeli mission against a prominent Hamas figure was thwarted and that special forces withdrew “on motorcycles under Israeli cover”. 

The forces included an Israeli-allied militia inside Gaza, which Hamas has controlled for years, he said.

– Mission ‘exposed’ –

Another security source told AFP that while the operation targeting a leadership figure was foiled, a security official who was present at the scene had been abducted.

Ismail al-Thawabta, head of Hamas’s media office in Gaza, said on X that an Israeli special forces operation was “exposed during the mission”, prompting heavy airstrikes in the area.

The Israeli military said it struck “several targets in the Gaza Strip in order to remove threats to the security forces”, giving no further information except that there were no injuries among Israeli troops. 

Separately, in the central Gaza Strip, Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah reported that Israeli fire killed two other people including a girl. The civil defence confirmed the toll.

Despite a US-backed ceasefire that took effect in October 2025, violence has not halted in the Gaza Strip, with Israel continuing to target Palestinians it says are militants.

Israeli operations in Gaza have killed at least 1,326 people since the ceasefire came into effect, according to the Palestinian territory’s health ministry, which also operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

The Israeli army has reported five deaths in its ranks over the same period, as well as the death of one civilian contractor.

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