IDF destroys Hamas training camp in Gaza, kills head of group’s smuggling unit

The chief of Hamas’s smuggling unit was killed in an airstrike in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis earlier this week, the IDF and Shin Bet said Thursday, while also announcing the killing of a prominent Palestinian Islamic Jihad member last week.

Yahya Fathi Abd al-Qader Abu Shaar, who worked in recent years to smuggle weapons and other military equipment for Hamas, including equipment used during the terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, was killed on Tuesday, the IDF said.

The IDF released footage of the strike.

The military said another strike in Khan Younis last week killed a leading member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, which is allied with Hamas and also participated in the October 7 onslaught.

Mazen Ibraheem Mahfouz Farah had directed “significant” terror attacks in Israel over the past two years, and especially in recent months, according to the IDF.

Footage released by the IDF on April 17, 2025, shows a strike on the chief of Hamas’s smuggling unit in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. (Israel Defense Forces)

In both strikes, the IDF said it took numerous steps to mitigate civilian harm, including the use of a “precision munition, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”

Additionally, a Hamas operative at one of the terror group’s command centers was targeted in an airstrike in northern Gaza’s Jabalia on Thursday, the IDF and Shin Bet said on Thursday.

Palestinian media reported that the strike hit a school in Jabalia that served as a shelter for displaced Gazans. The reports said six people were killed and several others were wounded in the attack.

The command center had been used by the terror operative “to plan and carry out terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops,” the military said.

The IDF said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm in the strike, including the use of a “precision munition, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”

“The Hamas terrorist organization systematically violates international law while taking over civilian infrastructure, and while brutally exploiting the civilian population as a human shield for its terror attacks,” the military added.

Hamas training camp destroyed

Troops of the Golani Brigade operating in the newly created Morag Corridor area, between Rafah and Khan Younis, have demolished a Hamas training camp, the military said Thursday.

The facility, belonging to Hamas’s Shaboura Battalion, included a mock Israeli tank, photos released by the IDF showed.

The IDF said the troops also captured a cache of weapons and destroyed other Hamas infrastructure in the area.

The IDF said that a total of some 110 targets were struck by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza over the past two days.

The targets included cells of terror operatives and infrastructure used by Hamas and other terror groups, according to the military.

Wednesday night, a building belonging to Hamas’s naval force in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, which the IDF said was used to plan attacks on Israel, was struck.

Hamas-run agency: IDF strikes on encampments kill 25

Gaza’s Hamas-controlled civil defense agency claimed Thursday that Israeli airstrikes hit multiple encampments for displaced Palestinians across the territory, allegedly killing at least 25 people.

Agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said an overnight strike Wednesday-Thursday targeted several tents in the al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Younis, resulting in 16 deaths.

“At least 16 martyrs, most of them women and children, and 23 others were wounded following a direct strike by two Israeli missiles on several tents housing displaced families in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis,” Bassal told AFP.

Survivors described a large explosion at the densely packed encampment zone that set multiple tents ablaze.

“We were sitting peacefully in the tent, under God’s protection, when we suddenly saw something red glowing — and then the tent exploded, and the surrounding tents caught fire,” Israa Abu al-Rus told AFP.

“This is supposed to be a safe area in Al-Mawasi,” Abu al-Rus said. “We fled the tent towards the sea and saw the tents burning.”

According to Bassal, two additional strikes on other encampments of displaced people have killed nine and wounded several more.

Seven were killed in a strike on tents in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, while another attack near the al-Mawasi area killed a father and his child who were living in a tent, Bassal said.

There was no immediate comment from the IDF.

The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when some 5,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive, and 35 of whom have been confirmed dead — including 58 of those abducted on October 7.

According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, more than 50,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel assesses it has killed about 20,000 combatants in Gaza as of January, as well as some 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.

Israel’s toll in the Gaza ground offensive and military operations along the border stands at 410.