The Israel Defense Forces said airstrikes in Gaza on October 14 and 15 killed two Hamas military commanders who participated in the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The Times of Israel reported that Maher Walid Omar al-Husseini, a commander of a Hamas Nukhba cell, was killed in a strike on Wednesday. The military said he had attacked the Re’im base during the 2023 assault and had recently advanced plans for attacks on Israeli troops and civilians.
A separate strike in northern Gaza on Thursday killed Mohammed Mohammed Abd al-Khalek Hala, whom the military identified as a commander in Hamas’s weapons-production division. The IDF said Hala had produced weapons and helped rebuild Hamas’s military capacity across Gaza. Those descriptions and allegations came from the military; the report did not include an independent account of their recent activity.
The strikes formed part of a continuing series of Israeli operations against Hamas members in Gaza after the October 2025 ceasefire. The IDF said the two men were killed to remove threats to Israeli troops and civilians, and described their activity as a violation of the ceasefire. The published report did not provide the specific intelligence behind those assessments or detail the terms of the ceasefire.
The timing matters because the strikes targeted figures associated with the October 7 operation as well as the group’s weapons and field structures. The IDF said its campaign has focused on operatives it believes are rebuilding Hamas’s forces. That is the military’s stated rationale; the public account does not establish how much of Hamas’s capacity has been restored or how the strikes affected it.
The Times of Israel also reported that a separate strike in Khan Younis killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member on October 15. That death was attributed to a different armed group and is covered separately. Hamas remains an organization designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States, according to the U.S. State Department’s public designation list.