Israel attempted to kill Hamas's Gaza chief Ali al-Amoudi in Saturday strike

Israel attempted to kill Ali al-Amoudi, who succeeded Yahya Sinwar as Hamas’s leader in the Gaza Strip, in a strike on Gaza City early on Saturday that killed five people, Israeli media reported.

An Israeli airstrike hit a building in western Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood overnight, targeting al-Amoudi, a security source told Haaretz. The Times of Israel reported that Palestinian media said those killed included a young man, a mother and her daughter, and two other adult women, and that al-Amoudi was not named among the dead. The Israel Defense Forces have not commented on the strike while it assesses the results.

According to security sources cited by Kan News, al-Amoudi was inside the apartment complex that was hit, and his chances of surviving the strike were “very small”. His fate remained unconfirmed on Saturday.

Al-Amoudi, a former head of Sinwar’s office, was released from Israeli prison in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange after serving nearly 20 years. He was elected to Hamas’s political bureau and became the group’s de facto leader in Gaza after Sinwar was killed in October 2024, formally taking up the position in July, the Jerusalem Post reported. The Times of Israel said he is a frontrunner to succeed Khalil al-Hayya as head of Hamas’s political bureau.

Separately, the IDF said it had killed two Islamic Jihad commanders in strikes on Gaza City on Saturday: Ahmad Mahmoud Harb al-Ramlawi, described as the commander of a missile unit attached to the Shuja’iyya Brigade, and Mounir Ibrahim al-Masri, described as the head of the organisation’s anti-tank missile cell (JPost; Times of Israel; AFP via L’Orient Today).