THE military wing of Hamas said Sunday that the commander of its northern brigade and four other senior leaders had been killed during Israel’s offensive against the movement.
In a statement, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said Ahmed al-Ghandour was a member of its military council, and named three of the others, among them Ayman Siyyam, head of its rocket division, while its West Bank branch confirmed another leader’s death.
“We pledge to Allah we will continue their path and that their blood will be a light for the mujahedeen and a fire for the occupiers,” the statement said, without saying when they were killed.
The Israeli army confirmed it had killed “five senior commanders”.
It identified Ghandour as “a leading figure in the planning and execution of the October 7 attack” when Hamas militants stormed into Israel.
Since then, Israel has waged a huge military campaign that Gaza’s Hamas rulers say has killed nearly 15,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians.
The army said Ghandour headed one of the Hamas military wing’s five regional brigades in the Gaza Strip.
It identified Siyyam as a senior figure who headed Hamas’s rockets division for “approximately 15 years”.
Wael Rajab, described as Ghandour’s deputy and the former police chief in northern Gaza, had also been killed, it said, as had Raafat Salman, a senior operative in Qassam’s Gaza City Brigade involved in planning the motorised glider infiltration on October 7.
The fifth dead commander, Farsan Khalifa, was a senior operative with Hamas’s West Bank headquarters who “aided and was close to” its Gaza leadership, it added.
The Israeli army said Ghandour, Siyyam and Khalifa were killed in the same strike, without saying where or when it took place.
