CAIRO: A senior Hamas official told Reuters on Saturday (May 16) that the chief of the group’s military wing had died, a day after Israel said that it had carried out airstrikes targeting him.
Earlier, witnesses in Gaza City said that mosques had announced Izz al-Din al-Haddad’s “martyrdom”. He is the most senior Hamas official killed by Israel since an October US-backed ceasefire deal that was meant to halt fighting in Gaza.
Hamas has not publicly confirmed Haddad’s death.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a joint statement with his defence minister on Friday that Haddad had been targeted, though they did not say if he had been killed.
Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said Haddad was an architect of the Oct 7, 2023 attacks launched by Hamas militants that precipitated Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.
Haddad, who became the group’s military chief in Gaza after Israel’s killing of Mohammad Sinwar in May 2025, “was responsible for the murder, abduction, and harm inflicted on thousands of Israeli civilians (and) soldiers”, they said.
Israel and Hamas remain deadlocked in indirect talks to advance US President Donald Trump’s post-war plan for Gaza that is meant to end more than two years of fighting.
Medics in Gaza on Friday said that at least seven people, including three women and a child, were killed and at least 50 injured in air strikes targeting an apartment and a vehicle. It is not clear if Haddad was one of the dead.
Israel has escalated its attacks in Gaza in the weeks since halting its joint bombing with the US in Iran, redirecting its fire back on the ruined Palestinian territory where the military says that Hamas fighters are tightening their grip.