White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said last night that an Israeli strike killed Marwan Issa, the deputy leader of the military wing of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who helped plan the attack on Israel on October 7 last year.
Israel and Hamas have not yet confirmed this, and Sullivan did not say how US intelligence concluded he was killed, and if confirmed, Issa would be the highest-ranking member of Hamas killed in Gaza since the war began. Israel has killed several Hamas leaders over the years, but they were quickly replaced and there was no apparent impact on the organization’s operations.
Sullivan told reporters in Washington that “Issa was killed in an Israeli operation last week.”
He was a deputy to Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, who was said to have survived several assassination attempts before.
The main leader of Hamas in Gaza, who is believed to have masterminded the October 7 attack that sparked the war, is Yahya Sinwar.
Both Sinwar and Deif are believed to be alive and hiding in Gaza, and Israel has vowed to kill them. Israeli leaders claim that more than 13,000 Hamas fighters have been killed since the start of the war, but have not provided evidence for this.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday that at least 31,726 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli offensive since attacks by Palestinian extremists led by Hamas in southern Israel.
That ministry does not distinguish between killed civilians and combatants, but claims that the majority, two-thirds, of those killed are women and children, Beta news agency writes.
