At least 10 said killed in Gaza airstrikes that Israel says targeted Hamas commanders
IDF: Strikes in Nuseirat and Gaza City were against terror operatives planning attacks on Israeli troops; UN: More than half of all aid workers killed worldwide in 2025 were in Gaza
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Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday killed at least 10 people and wounded 15, according to Palestinian media, with the IDF saying the airstrikes targeted Hamas operatives.
The first strike, in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, targeted a Hamas company commander who invaded Israel on October 7, according to the military. Palestinian media reported that one person riding a motorcycle was killed in that strike.
Less than half an hour later, the military struck a police station in Gaza City, killing nine people — including a 13-year-old girl — and wounding 15, according to Palestinian media.
The target of that strike was a Hamas commander and several other operatives who were alongside him, the army said. The IDF asserted that the terror operatives had planned to carry out attacks on Israeli troops operating in the Strip, justifying the strikes amid the ceasefire.
Later Wednesday, the IDF said that at least four Hamas operatives and a member of a smaller terror group were present at the police station in order to advance attacks on troops stationed in the Strip.
“At the time of the strike, at least four terrorists from the military wing of the Hamas terror group and a terrorist from the Popular Resistance Committees terror organization were present,” the military said, adding that it will provide an update on the strike once the results are clear.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem condemned what he called Israel’s “complete disregard for all calls for a ceasefire.”
Qassem said US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace “bears responsibility for this escalation due to its failure to fulfill its obligations by pressuring the occupation” — how Hamas refers to Israel — to abide by its commitments.
In a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, US envoy Jared Kushner pressed the Israeli premier to hold back on its targeted airstrikes on Hamas commanders in Gaza, a request Netanyahu rejected, according to an official present at the sit-down.
Wednesday’s strikes came a day after another unusually deadly Israeli strike in Gaza, with the IDF saying it had targeted a meeting of Hamas commanders and elite operatives in Gaza City in an attack that the Hamas-run civil defense agency killed six and wounded 14.
The military said Tuesday that the strike, near the city’s port, targeted commanders and members of Hamas’s Nukhba Force, which led the October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel that started the war in Gaza.
The IDF then officially announced Wednesday that the strike a day earlier killed four Nukhba Force commanders in Hamas’s Beit Lahia Battalion.
They were named by the military as: Muhammad Hamdi Ahmed al-Masri, a company commander; Samad Samir Harb Abu Jabal, a platoon commander who invaded Israel during the October 7 onslaught; Muhammad Attar, a platoon commander; and Muhammad Fathi Hussein Nasser, also a platoon commander.
The military said the operatives were involved in advancing attacks on troops: “The commanders’ activities posed a threat to IDF troops, and they were therefore eliminated in an aerial strike to remove the threat.”
And earlier Wednesday, the IDF announced that two Hamas tunnels, spanning in total some two kilometers (1.2 miles) underground, were recently sealed by combat engineers.
The IDF said the tunnels were found in central and southern Gaza, amid efforts to clear the Israeli-held portion of the Strip of Hamas infrastructure.
The army said it used concrete to close off the tunnels. Sealing tunnels with concrete can be a cheaper and less risky alternative to blowing them up, although it takes longer to carry out.
שני תוואים תת-קרקעים נוספים נאטמו ברצועת עזה: פעילות כוחות החטיבה הדרומית ויחידת יהל"ם
לכל הפרטים????https://t.co/ZbgtCjv4GD pic.twitter.com/uZelNFInFC
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) August 19, 2026
Figures released by the United Nations on Wednesday asserted that a record number of humanitarian workers were attacked worldwide in 2025, with Gaza accounting for more than half of the 350 aid staffers killed.
Some 907 aid workers were killed, injured or kidnapped in 2025 versus 833 the year before, according to the Aid Worker Security Database, a platform funded by Canada and Australia that compiles major security incidents affecting aid workers.
Of those, 350 were killed, down slightly from a record 387 in 2024.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the level of violence is appalling and urges states to respect the rules of war and hold perpetrators accountable.
“Serving others has become more dangerous than ever,” he said.
Gaza was by far the most deadly place for aid workers in 2025, with 186 humanitarian staffers killed there, the database showed, followed by Sudan. The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA has reported at least 393 staff killed there since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, 2023.
Israel has provided evidence of the refugee agency’s staffers taking part in the Hamas-led October 7 attack, in which some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed and 251 kidnapped. It has claimed that the agency is riddled with members of Hamas and other terror groups, and has said it goes to great lengths to avoid harm to aid workers and civilians.
Poll sees falling support for Hamas, especially in West Bank
Meanwhile, a new poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed a decline in support for Hamas, particularly among Palestinians in the West Bank.
The survey, conducted earlier this month and released last week, found that 42% of respondents expressed satisfaction with Hamas’s performance during the war with Israel, down from 60% in the previous poll conducted in late October 2025.
In the West Bank, 45% of respondents expressed satisfaction with the terror group, a sharp drop from 66% who were happy with Hamas 10 months ago. In Gaza, the fall-off was slightly less pronounced, going from 51% in October to 38% in the more recent poll.
In the previous poll, conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Gaza ceasefire deal, 39% of respondents overall said Hamas had emerged victorious. Today, that figure has fallen to 20%, with another 15% saying Israel won and 60% maintaining that neither side emerged victorious.
Seventy-two percent of respondents said the terror group should not give up its weapons before a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, while 20% said it should.
Nearly 50% of respondents say they believe Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Palestinian legislative elections will be held at the end of November. Elections have not been held since 2006, with plans for a vote repeatedly called off in the last two decades.
Were presidential elections to be held, Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti — currently in Israeli prison serving five consecutive terms plus 40 years for helping plan attacks during the Second Intifada that killed five civilians — remains the most popular candidate, with 56% saying they would vote for him over Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya (26%) or Abbas (14%).
The poll, overseen by Khalil Shikaki, surveyed 830 Palestinians in the West Bank and 440 in the Gaza Strip between August 5 and 8, with a ±3.5% margin of error.
The Times of Israel Community.