Hamas officials confirmed Wednesday that the new military leader of the terrorist organization, Mohammed Odeh, was eliminated by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Tuesday.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz was the first to announce Odeh’s death on Tuesday. Katz said Israel remains determined to prevent Hamas from controlling Gaza, “either civilly or militarily.”
A joint statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence agency, said that “several buildings in the heart of Gaza City that served as a hideout for [Odeh] were attacked, after months of intelligence surveillance in order to track his movements and the movements of his assistants in the organization.”
The statement added that “a nearby apartment belonging to a Hamas terrorist who raided on October 7 and was part of Odeh’s circle of assistants” was hit by the same airstrike.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement that described Odeh as “one of the architects of the October 7 massacre,” and said he was “responsible for the murder, abduction, and wounding of many Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers.”
Hamas confirmed the death of Odeh on Wednesday and said the airstrike also killed his wife and two of his children. Local health officials said a total of 5 people were killed in the strike, along with 12 injuries.
According to eyewitnesses, at least five missiles struck the upper floors of the building near the center of Gaza City where Odeh was holed up. The streets around the building were described by local media as filled with shoppers preparing for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Thousands gathered on Wednesday to attend a funeral for Odeh and his family, whose caskets were paraded through the streets covered by green Hamas flags. Some of the mourners carried firearms and discharged their weapons into the air during the procession.
Odeh was a longtime Hamas intelligence operative who became commander of the organization’s “military wing,” the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, only a few days ago. His predecessor, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on May 15. Haddad’s two predecessors were themselves eliminated by Israeli strikes after Hamas launched the Gaza War by massacring Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
Hamas is running a bit low on seasoned military commanders, but i24 News ran down a list of four likely successors to Odeh on Wednesday. One of them, Haitham al-Hawajiri of the al-Shati Camp Battalion, is a Gaza City field commander whose death was previously announced by Israel, but who turned out to have survived. Another, Hussein Fayyad, is notorious for releasing videos that declared “victory” for Hamas in Gaza.
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