Israel Says It Killed Hamas Military Chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad in Gaza City Strike
Israeli officials called the death of the senior commander, who took over Hamas's armed wing after Mohammed Sinwar was killed last year, the "closing of a circle" on the October 7 attacks; his wife, daughter and at least five others were also killed.
Israel announced Saturday that an airstrike in Gaza City had killed Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the leader of Hamas's military wing and one of the last surviving architects of the October 7, 2023 attacks, dealing the militant group its single biggest leadership blow since the war began.
The Israeli military said the strike was carried out Friday evening, May 15, 2026, and that al-Haddad, who had assumed command after the killing of Mohammed Sinwar last year, was eliminated along with his wife, his daughter and several aides at a location in Gaza City. Palestinian emergency services said at least seven people were killed at the scene and more than 50 were wounded, with casualties taken to al-Shifa Hospital.
"This is an important closing of a circle," Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said in a recorded statement. "The name of the master murderer, Iz al-Din Haddad, came up time and time again" in the planning of the October 7 assault, which left roughly 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 250 abducted into Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has tied his political fortunes to dismantling Hamas's military command, addressed Israelis in a televised statement Saturday night. "I promised that every single architect of the massacre and the hostage-taking would be eliminated down to the last one," Netanyahu said. "Today we are one step closer to fulfilling that promise." The prime minister also accused al-Haddad of "surrounding himself with hostages to prevent his elimination," though Israeli officials provided no immediate evidence that captives were present at the strike location.
The killing comes despite a fragile, U.S.-brokered ceasefire that has technically been in place since October, even as Israel has conducted near-daily strikes on what it describes as imminent threats. Hamas, which controls roughly half of the shattered enclave alongside Israeli forces, did not immediately confirm al-Haddad's death but issued a statement vowing that the group's chain of command would not be broken. Mosques in Gaza City announced his death through loudspeaker calls early Saturday morning, residents told CBS News.
The Biden-era ceasefire framework left unresolved questions about Hamas's future role in Gaza, and U.S. envoys have spent recent weeks shuttling between Cairo, Doha and Jerusalem trying to extend the truce into a permanent settlement. The killing of al-Haddad — once viewed as the most plausible Hamas negotiator on the remaining hostage file — is likely to scramble those talks. A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told reporters Saturday that Washington had not been notified before the strike but viewed the death of any October 7 planner as "a legitimate counterterrorism outcome."
Analysts said the strike further hollows out Hamas's senior ranks, but warned that the group has repeatedly reconstituted itself after the loss of figureheads from Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004 to Yahya Sinwar in 2024. "They lose a leader, they replace him within weeks," said Michael Milshtein, a former head of the Palestinian affairs division in Israeli military intelligence. "What you have left is a war of attrition with no political horizon." Gaza health authorities say more than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, the majority women and children, and humanitarian agencies warn that famine conditions persist across the territory's north.
Originally reported by CBS News.