The army announced Tuesday that Israeli strikes in Gaza over the past day had killed two Hamas members, including a terrorist who participated in the removal of the body of Israeli hostage Shani Louk during the October 7 attack.
Monday’s assassination of Tamer Muhammad Ibrahim al-Sabbagh in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip marked the last member of the Hamas cell that was seen kidnapping Louk on October 7, 2023, with three others killed earlier in the war and one captured by Israeli forces.
Infamous photos taken by independent AP photographer Ali Mahmud showed a half-naked woman, later identified as Louk, lying unconscious face down in the back of a van full of armed men in Gaza.
The army said Al-Sabbagh, seen in the photo, invaded Israeli territory on October 7 and took part in the kidnapping of Louk, 22, who was attending the Supernova music festival.
During the war and recently, al-Sabbagh carried out advanced attacks against Israeli troops and civilians and acted to restore Hamas’ capabilities, “in systematic violation of the ceasefire,” according to a joint statement from the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet, which added that he was killed to “eliminate the threat he posed.”
Louk’s body was recovered by IDF troops and returned to Israel in May 2024.
The military and Shin Bet also said an Israeli strike in Gaza on Tuesday killed Akram Bassam Shaaban Yassin, whom they identified as a senior officer in Hamas’ general security apparatus.
The security apparatus, according to the military, is a clandestine Hamas body responsible for the security of senior Hamas officials, communications between them, coordinating their meetings and transporting them between emergency sites.
The mechanism is also responsible for producing intelligence assessments, “which assist the organization’s senior leadership in making decisions and carrying out terrorist plots against the State of Israel,” the Israeli military added.
The army said his killing was part of “an ongoing effort to target senior officials of the apparatus and weaken its capabilities in the Gaza Strip.”
In June, the Israeli Air Force and Israeli Navy struck and killed several senior commanders of the security apparatus.
Yassin was among seven Palestinians who Hamas civil defense and local Gaza hospitals said were killed Tuesday in Israeli strikes on the coastal enclave. According to Shifa Hospital, Yassin’s wife was killed alongside him and several other people were injured in a residential building near the hospital in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said two more men were killed in Israeli strikes in the town of Al-Zawaida and the Wadi Gaza area in the central strip.
An Israeli strike in the Jabalia al-Balad area of northern Gaza killed one person, according to Bassal and Shifa hospitals, which said they received another victim of a strike in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.
Nasser Hospital said it had also received the body of a teenager killed by Israeli fire south of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army indicated that it was verifying the other information.
The strikes came as Israel in recent months has increasingly targeted terrorists in Gaza, including many terrorists who participated in the Hamas atrocities on October 7, claiming they posed a threat to Israeli forces.
According to the military, many of the recent strikes have focused on Hamas members involved in building the terror group’s forces, as well as Hamas’ secret headquarters and civilian control mechanisms in the Gaza Strip.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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