Hamas said on Sunday that a commander who helped plan and oversee the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel had been killed in an Israeli air strike, and the Israeli military confirmed his death. The Irish Times carries the report from Reuters.

Samir Abu Younis, 53, commander of the Rafah brigade, was killed on Saturday, Hamas’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said. The Israeli military said it killed him in a strike in the southern Gaza Strip overnight, and that he had led the Rafah brigade since his predecessor, Nael Abu Obeid, was killed on 15 September.

Medics cited by Reuters said Abu Younis was killed and others were wounded in a strike that targeted him in a street in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis. The BBC reports, separately, that witnesses saw four missiles hit a tent in the Al-Waha camp in Al-Mawasi and that a medical source at Nasser Hospital spoke of three injured people and a body brought there. The accounts do not give the same place or the same toll.

Hamas said Abu Younis joined the armed wing in 1991 and held several senior operational roles in Rafah before taking command of the brigade. The funeral is on Sunday afternoon in Khan Younis. The BBC carries the Al-Qassam Brigades’ wording, which calls the killing a “cowardly assassination” and describes him as one of the important commanders in planning the 7 October attack. In the same report, the Israeli military says steps were taken to limit harm to civilians and that Abu Younis was trying to rebuild the brigade and was directing attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.

The Reuters report notes that the October 2025 ceasefire halted major fighting but has not stopped Israeli attacks or secured Hamas’s disarmament. Gaza health authorities say at least 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire took effect, and five Israeli soldiers have been killed. Palestinian authorities speak of more than 74,000 dead in the campaign Israel launched after Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October.

In the same wire, Reuters notes a World Health Organisation warning on Friday about respiratory illness in Gaza, with worse expected after rains flooded tens of thousands of tents. The warning is about the camps for displaced people, apart from the strike in which Abu Younis died.

Image: Wikimedia Commons — a 1931 map of Khan Yunis, British Mandate administration, public domain. The map is not from Saturday’s strike and not from the funeral.

Sources consulted: Senior Hamas commander killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza — The Irish Times; Israel kills a Hamas commander in a strike on a Gaza camp — BBC.