Israel announced on Wednesday that it had assassinated Mohammed Odeh, the new chief of Hamas’ armed branch in Gaza, after killing his predecessor earlier this month, despite a continuing ceasefire.
Since Hamas’ October 2023 attack, Israel has deliberately targeted the organization’s leaders in Gaza and around the region.
Odeh is the fourth commander of Israel’s Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades since the conflict began in Gaza.
The Israeli military and the Shin Bet domestic security agency confirmed Odeh’s murder on Tuesday, stating that he was appointed chief of the brigades following the May 15 shooting of Ezzedine al-Haddad.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated that the “commander of the armed wing of the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza was eliminated yesterday and sent to meet his associates in the depths of hell.”
A Hamas source told AFP that Odeh’s wife and two children were also killed in the airstrike and that a funeral procession would be held in Gaza City on Wednesday.
The group never formally proclaimed or acknowledged Odeh as the brigades’ leader, but he had long been the director of its intelligence agency and was one of the group’s most senior surviving members in the Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday evening, a security source in Gaza told AFP that Israeli forces were heavily bombarding western Gaza City.
The source said he had “no information on the target,” but that “the scale and intensity of the attack fueled speculation that the target was commander Mohammed Odeh, who succeeded the martyred commander Ezzedine al-Haddad.”
“We committed ourselves to eliminating everyone who led the October 7 massacre, and that is what we will do: they are all marked for death, wherever they may be,” Katz said in his post on X.
He also stressed Israel’s goal of ending Hamas’s rule over the Palestinian territory and alluded to a plan for the forced displacement of its residents.
“The plan for voluntary migration from Gaza will also be implemented — everything will be done at the right time and in the right way,” he said.
