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16-12-2025
JERUSALEM/ GAZA STRIP: The Israeli military sets it has killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saad in a strike in Gaza City.
The attack on Saturday killed five people and wounded at least 25, according to Gaza health authorities.
Hamas in a statement did not confirm the death of Raed Saad. It said a civilian vehicle had been struck outside Gaza City and asserted it was a violation of the ceasefire that took effect on October.
In a post on Telegram, the army alleged that the commander had been operating 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.
If Saad was killed, it would be the highest-profile assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a fragile ceasefire deal came into effect in October.
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.
Saad used to head Hamas’s Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best-equipped, those sources said.
The Wafa news agency reported that an Israeli drone hit a vehicle at the Nabulsi junction in the west of Gaza City, resulting in casualties.
The agency did not report on specific numbers, and it was not clear if the attack was the one that allegedly killed the Hamas member.
Since the ceasefire started in October, Israel has continued to attack Gaza daily reaching nearly 800 times and killing at least 386 people in a clear breach of the agreement, according to authorities in Gaza.
Israel also continues to block the majority of aid trucks from entering the enclave. The United Nations General Assembly on Friday 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.
About 1,200 people were killed in the attack and more than 250 people were taken hostage.
All have been returned except for the remains of an Israeli police officer, Ran Gvili, 24, who is believed to have been killed while fighting Hamas gunmen in Kibbutz Alumim.
Since then, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action.
The diplomatic focus is now shifting to the next stage of President Trump’s plan which would require the disarmament of Hamas as part of what it calls the de-radicalization and redevelopment of Gaza.
It envisages Gaza being run by the “temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee,” overseen by a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump. Security would be provided by an International Stabilization Force although its make up remains unclear.
The eventual aim is for a reformed Palestinian Authority to take control of the territory, and for Israeli forces to withdraw, after which “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
Many aspects of the plan are controversial in Israel where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state. (Int’l News Desk)
