The commander of Hamas’s so-called West Bank headquarters and another top official in the terror group were killed in tonight’s Israeli airstrike in Rafah, according to the IDF.
The West Bank headquarters is a Hamas unit charged with advancing attacks against Israel from or in the West Bank.
Yassin Rabia, the head of the West Bank headquarters, and Khaled Najjar, another senior member of the unit, were killed in the strike in the Tel Sultan area of northwestern Rafah, the IDF says. The strike, according to Hamas health officials, killed some 35 people.
The IDF says the strike was carried out based on “precise intelligence.”
Rabia, according to the IDF, “managed all of the military arrays of the West Bank headquarters… was involved in the transfer of funds for terror purposes and directed attacks by Hamas operatives” in the West Bank.
The IDF also says that Rabia committed several deadly attacks himself, in 2001 and 2002, killing Israeli soldiers.
Najjar was involved in directing shooting attacks and other terror activities in the West Bank, and was also involved in funneling funds to Hamas operatives, the military says.
Najjar also carried out several attacks between 2001 and 2003, according to the IDF, killing civilians and killing and wounding soldiers.
The military says it is aware that the strike and a fire sparked by it caused civilian casualties. It says it continues to investigate.
Hamas says that Palestinians must “rise up and march” against the Israeli army’s “massacre” in Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, which according to the IDF targeted a Hamas compound and killed two senior commanders.
“In light of the horrific Zionist massacre this evening committed by the criminal occupation army against the tents of the displaced… we call on the masses of our people in the West Bank, Jerusalem, the occupied territories and abroad to rise up and march angrily against the ongoing Zionist massacre against our people in the sector,” the Palestinian terror group says in a statement.
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