IDF says strike killed final Hamas member who took part in kidnapping Shani Louk
Army and Shin Bet also announce targeting of senior operative in terror group’s general security apparatus, who along with his wife were among seven Gazans reportedly killed Tuesday
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The military on Tuesday announced that Israeli strikes in Gaza over the past day killed two Hamas operatives, including a terrorist who took part in abducting the body of Israeli hostage Shani Louk during the October 7 onslaught.
The killing of Tamer Muhammad Ibrahim al-Sabbagh in the northern Gaza Strip’s Jabalia on Monday marked the final member of the Hamas cell that was seen abducting Louk on October 7, 2023, with three others killed earlier in the war and one captured by Israeli forces.
Infamous photos taken by AP freelance photographer Ali Mahmud showed a half-naked woman, later identified as Louk, lying unconscious face-down in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza filled with armed men.
The army said al-Sabbagh, seen in the photo, invaded Israeli territory on October 7 and took part in the abduction of Louk, 22, who was attending the Supernova music festival.
During the war and recently, al-Sabbagh had carried out advanced attacks on Israeli troops and civilians and acted to restore Hamas’s capabilities, “in systematic violation of the ceasefire,” according to a joint statement from the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, which added that he was killed to “remove the threat he posed.”
Louk’s body was recovered by IDF troops and returned to Israel in May 2024.
Both the military and Shin Bet also said that an Israeli strike in Gaza on Tuesday killed Akram Bassam Shaaban Yassin, who they identified as a senior officer in Hamas’s general security apparatus.
The security apparatus, according to the military, is a clandestine Hamas body responsible for security for top Hamas officials, communications between them, coordinating their meetings, and transporting them between emergency sites.
The mechanism is also responsible for producing intelligence assessments, “which assists the organization’s senior leadership in decision-making and in carrying out terror plots against the State of Israel,” the IDF added.
The military said his killing continued an “ongoing effort to target senior officials in the apparatus and weaken its capabilities in the Gaza Strip.”
In June, the Israeli Air Force and Israeli Navy struck and killed several top commanders in the security apparatus.
Yassin was among seven Palestinians who Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense and local hospitals reported were killed in Israeli strikes across the coastal enclave on Tuesday. According to Shifa Hospital, Yassin’s wife was killed alongside him and several others were injured in a residential block near the hospital in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital said two other men were killed in Israeli strikes in the town of Al-Zawaida and the Wadi Gaza area in the central Strip.
An Israeli strike in the Jabalia al-Balad area in northern Gaza killed one person, according to Bassal and Shifa Hospital, which reported it had received another victim of a strike in the Zeitoun neighborhood southeast of Gaza City.
Nasser Hospital reported that it had also received the body of a teenager killed by Israeli gunfire south of Khan Younis in Gaza’s south.
When contacted by AFP, the IDF said it was verifying the other reports.
The strikes came as Israel in recent months has increasingly targeted terror operatives in Gaza, including numerous terrorists who took part in the Hamas-led October 7 atrocities, saying they posed a threat to Israeli forces.
According to the military, many of the recent strikes focused on Hamas operatives involved in building up the terror group’s force, as well as secret headquarters and Hamas’s civil control mechanisms in the Strip.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.