Israel eliminates Hamas leader Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa, who planned October 7 attack
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Saturday that, in coordination with the Israel Security Agency (ISA), they had killed one of the founding members of Hamas in an airstrike.
Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa, a high-ranking commander in Hamas' military wing, was targeted and killed in Gaza City's Sabra neighbourhood on Friday.
According to the IDF, Al-Issa served as the head of Hamas' combat support headquarters, oversaw the group's military training operations, played a central role in building its military capabilities in the Gaza Strip, and was part of Hamas' General Security Council.
Eliminated Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa, one of the founders of Hamas' military wing. Issa led Hamas' force build-up, training, and planned the October 7 massacre. As Head of Combat Support, he advanced aerial & naval attacks against Israelis," said the IDF in a post on X.
The IDF & ISA will continue to locate and eliminate all terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre, the IDF further added.
Issa's killing comes shortly after a series of high-profile Israeli operations targeting militant leaders. Just days earlier, the IDF reported eliminating Asaad Abu Sharia, the head of the Mujahideen Brigades—a Palestinian jihadist group accused of the abduction and execution of Hamas hostages taken during the Oct. 7 attacks.
Abu Sharia was killed in Gaza City in a joint mission by the IDF and Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet.
In a separate operation last month, the IDF also eliminated Hamas leader Mohammad Sinwar in an airstrike on a Gaza hospital. Sinwar had been hiding in tunnels beneath the facility, and dramatic footage later showed Israeli soldiers pulling his body from the debris.
(This is a developing story)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
38 minutes ago
- First Post
UK government condemns 'Death to IDF' chants at Glastonbury festival
British authorities are also investigating statements made by Irish rap trio Kneecap, who have been fiercely critical of Israel and its current military assault against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip read more Bob Vylan performs on the West Holts Stage on the fourth day of the Glastonbury festival at Worthy Farm in the village of Pilton in Somerset, south-west England. AFP A British punk-rap group faced escalating criticism on Sunday for using anti-Israel statements during the Glastonbury festival, which prompted a police investigation. During their Saturday set, Bob Vylan led fans in chants of 'Death, death to the IDF,' an allusion to the Israeli military's acronym. British authorities are also investigating statements made by Irish rap trio Kneecap, who have been fiercely critical of Israel and its current military assault against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD One of Kneecap's members wore a T-shirt dedicated to the Palestine Action Group, which is due to be outlawed under UK terror legislation. The UK government has 'strongly condemned' Bob Vylan's shouts, which event organisers claimed had 'very much crossed a line'. 'We are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence,' the festival said in a statement. Avon and Somerset police said Saturday that video evidence would be assessed by officers 'to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation'. 'Life is sacred' The chants about Israel's military, condemned by the Israeli embassy in London, were led by Bob Vylan's frontman Bobby Vylan. They were broadcast live on the BBC, which airs coverage of Britain's most popular music festival. 'I thought it's appalling, to be honest,' UK minister Wes Streeting said of the chants, adding that 'all life is sacred'. 'I think the BBC and Glastonbury have got questions to answer about how we saw such a spectacle on our screens,' he told Sky News. The Israel embassy said in a statement late Saturday 'it was 'deeply disturbed by the inflammatory and hateful rhetoric expressed on stage at the Glastonbury Festival'. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD But Streeting, Labour's health secretary, also took aim at the embassy, telling it to 'get your own house in order'. 'I think there's a serious point there by the Israeli embassy. I wish they'd take the violence of their own citizens towards Palestinians more seriously,' he said, citing settler violence in the West Bank. A spokesperson for the BBC said Vylan's comments were 'deeply offensive' and the broadcaster had 'no plans' to make the performance available on its on-demand service. 'A joke' Kneecap, who have made headlines in recent months with their pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel stance, led crowds in chanting abuse against UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Starmer, and other politicians, had said the band should not perform after its member Liam O'Hanna, known by his stage name Mo Chara, was charged with a terror offence. He appeared in court earlier this month accused of having displayed a Hezbollah flag while saying 'Up Hamas, Up Hezbollah' after a video resurfaced of a London concert last year. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The Iran-backed Lebanese force Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas are banned in the UK, and it is an offence to express support for them. O'Hanna has denied the charge and told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on Friday that 'it was a joke – we're playing characters'. Kneecap regularly lead crowds in chants of 'Free Palestine' during their concerts. Their fans revere them for their anti-establishment stance and criticism of British imperialism but detractors call them extremists. The group apologised this year after a 2023 video emerged appearing to show one singer calling for the death of British Conservative lawmakers. Israel launched an offensive against Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza after the Islamist militant group launched an attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures. Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,412 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Mint
43 minutes ago
- Mint
Manu Joseph: What being in awe of Israel actually says about people
A few months ago, Hezbollah's operatives in Lebanon experienced something surreal—their pagers exploded. The next day, their walkie-talkies did the same. Israel, at first, said nothing officially. But later, it admitted what everyone already suspected: that its intelligence agency Mossad had orchestrated it. Israel managed to plant small explosives inside Hezbollah's pagers and walkie-talkies, possibly by creating a shell company that made these devices. A transmitted code then triggered blasts in thousands of devices, killing or maiming Hezbollah fighters and an unknown number of civilians. Israel seized this moment of chaos to launch a military air offensive, effectively decapitating the once-formidable militia that, like Iran, refused to accept Israel's right to exist. It is hard not to be impressed by Israel. But it's a complex sentiment. Awe for a nation whose survival strategies often involve morally devastating acts is also a peep into human nature. Israel elicits the admiration of outsiders for some unspoken reasons. Part of it is a masculine admiration for military genius, elegant tech and ruthless efficiency. Part of it is tangled with disdain for Muslims or the rest of West Asia. Perfectly good and sane people can claim, even to themselves, that they are moved by the plight of Gaza and also objectively dazzled by Israel. This may be because they do not consider all humans the same, even if they do not realize it. Some horrible things happen to humans. Once a population is framed as poor, the world tolerates a level of death and suffering among them. A dark algorithm seems to run, by which the perceived value of a life correlates with its wealth, or its nation's wealth. So the lives of air passengers in India are seen as more valuable than those of people on a public bus. Israeli lives appear more valuable than Iranian lives. And Iranian lives more valuable than Palestinian. There is something unsettling about awe. It is an omen that being 'neutral' is impossible. A person can resist all base human emotions to form an opinion about a faraway war. But then awe draws you in. Through awe, even objective observers pick a side. It is as though awe is human nature's way of forcing people to accept that they are primarily emotional above analytical. You can either marvel at the brilliance of Israel and submit to your hidden biases, or not be in awe at all because the oppressed remind you of your own oppressors, or maybe you are just a lovely person. If you accept there is such a thing as awe, Israel satisfies every condition to be a subject of this emotion. A tiny nation that is about 470km long and 135km at its widest, with a population of 9.5 million, has not only survived Arab nations that questioned its right to exist but also defeated their coalitions more than once, prospering all along with no oil but just people. Also consider Israel's sabotage of Iran's nuclear programme. The Natanz facility was 'air-gapped'—completely isolated from the internet to prevent cyber attacks. Yet, in 2009, Israel managed to infect it with the Stuxnet virus, probably developed in collaboration with the US. There is a theory that a Dutch engineer, reportedly recruited by Mossad, physically introduced the virus via a USB stick while servicing the facility. The malware disabled around a thousand centrifuges, setting Iran's nuclear ambitions back significantly. When Iran persisted with its uranium enrichment and, according to Israel, reached a point when it was just days away from developing a nuclear weapon, Israel struck in a spectacular way. In the opening hours of that offensive, it eliminated key figures in Iran's leadership. Israel's Iron Dome remains a modern marvel. As Iran launched waves of missiles, the system intercepted most of them with near-clinical precision. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei had to go into hiding, much like Salman Rushdie after the leader's predecessor issued a fatwa against him. Khamenei emerged after the ceasefire to make a defiant speech. A major reason behind Israel's success is its extraordinary human intelligence network, which is based on a remarkable way of the world: Israel manages to find traitors in other nations; other nations almost never find one in Israel. So, intellectually, objectively, analytically, it is possible to acknowledge Israel's genius without endorsing its transgressions. But such objectivity is rare and most people who are not Israeli and think their awe of Israel is objective are probably deluded or unable to face their own bias. Awe for Israel has a private history for many of us. I first encountered Israel's story as a child, listening to grown men discuss world affairs. One day, the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat went missing for many hours, and the men were saying that the amazing Israel might have picked him off. Eventually, Indians overimpressed by Israel could have ended with an imbalanced analysis of the world. India's right-wing often assumes there is a global fraternity of right-wing movements—that Netanyahu is somehow a brother-in-arms in their own politics. But this is a delusion. As this column has argued before, only the left can be a global fellowship. The right-wing everywhere is fundamentally local. If anything, right-wing governments tend to compensate for their harshness at home through exaggerated gestures of concern for foreign humanitarian causes—particularly those that do not cost them anything. The author is a journalist, novelist, and the creator of the Netflix series, 'Decoupled'.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Israel Says Iranian Plot To Assassinate Defence Minister Foiled; Israeli National Held
/ Jun 29, 2025, 03:50PM IST A man who is a Israeli national was arrested in April for being an alleged spy for Iran, who placed powerful explosives somewhere near the home of Israel Defence Minister Israel Katz, as part of an "Iranian plot to assassinate" the minister, according to a Channel 12 report. According to the report, the explosives were intended to explode when Katz closes by, adding that the Iranians were quite close to succeeding in their plan. However, it didn't happen. Watch.
