IDF says it killed 3 Hamas operatives over weekend as it keeps up Gaza strikes
Hamas-linked reports claim 2 kids killed Sunday; Military publishes what it says is 2024 Hamas document with plans to plant explosives near displaced-person camps in Gaza
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleEmanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The Israel Defense Forces said Monday that it was keeping up its strikes on Palestinian terror operatives in Gaza, having killed three over the weekend, while also publishing a document purporting to demonstrate Hamas’s strategy earlier in the war of putting Gaza’s civilians at risk to save itself.
A Hamas commander and two other operatives were killed in separate strikes in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, the military announced.
A strike in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City on Saturday killed Abdullah Mohammed Khamis Jaber, identified by the IDF as a Hamas operative involved in manufacturing weapons and a key member of the terror group’s arms production division.
A separate strike in the Tuffah area on Saturday killed Majed Ahmed Mustafa Sabbag, a Hamas cell commander, the military said.
The IDF said that another strike in northern Gaza’s Jabalia killed Amer Bashir Mohammed Khourani, a member of a Hamas engineering battalion.
The three operatives had recently been involved in advancing attacks on troops and Israeli civilians, and attempting to restore Hamas’s capabilities, “in systematic violation of the ceasefire,” the military added.
*צה"ל חיסל ראש חולייה ושני מחבלים מהזרוע הצבאית של ארגון הטרור חמאס*
צה"ל תקף במהלך סוף השבוע, במרחב דארג' תופאח שבצפון רצועת עזה וחיסל את עבדאללה מוחמד חמיס ג׳אבר, מחבל בזרוע הצבאית של ארגון הטרור חמאס.
במסגרת תפקידו, ג׳אבר סייע ליצירת אמצעי לחימה שונים, היווה גורם משמעותי… pic.twitter.com/ZgiFwrKV7M
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) October 19, 2026
Later in the day, Hamas-affiliated media outlets in Gaza reported that at least one person was killed in a drone strike in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northwestern Gaza City.
The IDF didn’t immediately comment.
#فيديو | شهيد ومصابون جراء استهداف طائرة مسيّرة للاحتلال حي الشيخ رضوان شمال غربي مدينة غزة. pic.twitter.com/Lvw5L9g6sd
— شبكة فلسطين للحوار (@paldf) October 19, 2026
Hamas-affiliated media says 2 children killed by IDF
Hamas-affiliated media reported on Sunday that two children had been killed by IDF forces in separate incidents in the Strip.
Masak al-Dalu, a 7-year-old girl, was reportedly shot dead by IDF troops near the al-Maghazi camp in central Gaza, while a boy named Tamer Soboh — whose age was not reported — was reportedly shot dead by the IDF west of Beit Lahiya in the Strip’s north.
The Times of Israel could not independently verify the reports. The IDF has yet to comment on either incident.
The latest strikes came as the IDF in recent months has increasingly targeted terror operatives in Gaza, including numerous terrorists who took part in the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, 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.
Document allegedly shows Hamas willingly endangered Gaza civilians
On Monday, the army published what it said was an internal Hamas document detailing the terror group’s efforts to plant bombs near displaced persons camps in the Gaza Strip during the war.
The document, written in April 2024, “shows that Hamas’s engineering department proposed planting explosive devices around displaced persons camps and detonating them as IDF troops approached, placing the civilian population in the camps at risk, to create panic as a smokescreen for the escape of its operatives,” the military said.
The IDF said the document was part of Hamas’s “preparations to protect its leadership and operatives and evacuate them from areas where the IDF was expected to operate, while endangering and exploiting the civilian population in the area, fully aware that these actions were likely to cause direct harm to civilians.”
“In the document, the Hamas terror organization proposed an additional method of planting explosive devices along routes used by residents of the Gaza Strip, as part of an attempt to delay the advance of IDF troops in the area,” the military said.
Another proposal in the document included firing “stun grenades into the camps to create chaos and panic, to allow Hamas terrorists hiding in the area to flee.”
“This is further evidence that the Hamas terror organization is willing to endanger the lives of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip to advance its terrorist activities,” the IDF added.
UN agency slashes assistance to Gazans
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said Monday that it would end monthly assistance to 500,000 people in Gaza due to a funding shortfall, while warning that needs remain acute.
“As of this month, we’re now cutting half a million people from the number of people that we’re assisting,” Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, told AFP.
The reductions bring down to 1.1 million — still roughly half of war-battered Gaza’s population — the number of Palestinians receiving WFP aid either in food or cash assistance.
“This has been a lifeline. But now, rather than being able to sustain and scale up that assistance, we’re actually having to reduce it,” Hughes said. “And that’s not because we don’t have humanitarian access to deliver food; that’s because we don’t have funding.”
In addition to reducing the number of people who receive rations, the WFP has been forced to shrink the content.
Families receiving food assistance will now get only one food parcel instead of two and a smaller bag of wheat flour, the WFP said in an operational note.
The 75,000 families who receive assistance in cash will see the amount reduced from 1,250 to 750 shekels ($400 to $240) per month.
The WFP is funded by governments as well as private donors. It has seen a sharp drop in resources, including after US President Donald Trump returned to power and drastically slashed contributions to UN agencies as well as bilateral aid.
The agency says it needs about $450 million over the next six months for its operations in Gaza and the West Bank, but in 2026 it has only received about half the usual financing for the West Bank and Gaza.
In September, the agency also reduced by half the number of aid recipients in the West Bank from 400,000 to 200,000.
Israel has ramped up longstanding criticism of the United Nations since the Gaza war, accusing the world body of bias and perpetuating dependency among Palestinians.
Nurit Yohanan and AFP contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.