Israel says Palestinian Islamic Jihad operations head killed in Gaza strike

A top Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander was killed in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip, the IDF and Shin Bet announced Sunday.

According to a joint statement, Muhammad Abu Saheel, the Islamic Jihad operations chief, was killed in a strike Saturday carried out by fighter jets on a command room embedded within a former school in northern Gaza.

Abu Saheel was a “central operative” in Islamic Jihad, and was involved in “compiling situation assessments and coordinating terrorist operations” with Hamas, the statement said.

Before the strike on the Fahd al-Sabah School, the IDF said it carried out “many steps” to mitigate civilian harm, including by using aerial surveillance and other intelligence.

Also Sunday, two IDF officers were seriously wounded in separate incidents of fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, the military said.

The officers served with the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd and 9th battalions.

Both were wounded by anti-tank fire, according to initial IDF probes of the incidents.

At least 40 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes across Gaza on Sunday, including two dozen when a residential building in the northern town of Jabalia was hit, Palestinian health officials and a human rights group said.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza said at least 24 people were killed when an Israeli strike destroyed the three-story building in Jabalia at dawn. Thirty other people from nearby houses were wounded, PCHR said in a statement.

Footage circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed about a dozen bodies wrapped in blankets and laid on the ground outside a hospital near Jabalia. Local media said they were the bodies of people killed in the attack on the residential building, which housed at least 30 people, according to residents.

The military said it struck a site in Jabalia in which “terrorists were operating.”

“These terrorists posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the area. The details are under review,” the military said.

Several hundred people are estimated to remain in Jabalia, and a few thousand more in other towns in the area. Israel launched renewed operations in the area a month ago after Hamas forces regrouped there.

The army said it has been working to evacuate the civilian population from towns north of Gaza City in order to operate against the terror group there without harming innocents.

In Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike on a house in the Sabra neighborhood on Sunday killed Wael Al-Khour, an official at Gaza’s Hamas-run welfare ministry, as well as his wife, one son, two daughters and three grandchildren, medical officials and relatives said.

The military said it was looking into the report.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said its teams, in collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross, evacuated 20 patients from Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia on Sunday to another facility in Gaza City.

The IDF has accused Hamas of embedding itself in civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and mosques. The army said its strikes are based on intelligence of terrorist activity and that multiple steps are taken to minimize civilian casualties.

Qatar, a key mediator between Hamas and Israel, said Saturday that it had suspended its efforts to negotiate a deal to end the war and return hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. It said it would resume its role when “the parties show their willingness and seriousness to end the brutal war.”

Some Palestinians in Gaza responded with frustration.

“The Arab silence that controls the Arab capitals, that’s because of the fear of the American administration and Israel,” said Akram Jarada, displaced from Gaza City.

As experts from a panel that monitors food security say famine is imminent or may already be happening, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reportedly conveyed a “sharp” message to his new Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, during their first phone conversation on Friday, saying Israel risks jeopardizing the ongoing provision of US weaponry for the Gaza war if it does not credibly show that it has improved the supply and distribution of aid to Gazan noncombatants.

In October, Austin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israel in a letter that it had 30 days — a deadline that ends Wednesday — to implement significant improvements to the humanitarian situation in Gaza or jeopardize the continued supply of US weapons.

Israel rejected the experts’ warning of famine, with the military saying Saturday that “researchers continue to rely on partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests.”

The military said it had increased aid efforts including opening an additional crossing on Friday.

In the last two months, 39,000 trucks carrying more than 840,000 tons of food have entered Gaza, it said, and meetings were taking place daily with the UN, which had 700 trucks of aid awaiting pickup and distribution.

The war in Gaza was sparked on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

The United Nations said Friday that nearly 70 percent of the fatalities it had verified in the war were women and children, condemning what it alleged was a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

The tally by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights includes only fatalities it has managed to verify with three sources, and counting continues. At 8,119, the tally is at this stage much lower than the figure cited by Gaza’s health ministry.

Israel’s diplomatic mission to the UN in Geneva said it categorically rejected the report.

“Once again, OHCHR fails to accurately reflect the realities on the ground, and disregards the extensive role of Hamas and other terrorist organizations in deliberately causing civilian harm in Gaza,” it said.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 370.