IDF strikes Hamas pickup trucks used on Oct. 7, confirms top terror official killed Sunday

The Israel Defense Forces carried out dozens of airstrikes Sunday night and Monday, including on empty white pick-up trucks belonging to the Hamas terror group, of the type used in the October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel and in propaganda ceremonies for the release of hostages.

The IDF and Shin Bet security agency also confirmed on Monday that a top Hamas official was targeted and killed the previous night.

Rocket sirens sounded in the Israeli community of Netiv Ha’asara near the Gaza border on Monday, but were later confirmed to have been a false alarm.

The IDF destroyed over 100 pickup trucks used by Hamas terrorists, in airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Monday, the military said.

Some of the trucks were used by Hamas in its October 7, 2023, terror onslaught in southern Israel, as well as for other operations in Gaza, including to transfer weapons, the army added.

Armed Hamas gunmen were also seen parading in such vehicles during recent hostage release propaganda ceremonies.

The airstrikes targeting the pickup trucks were carried out in all areas of Gaza. A strike hit a building where several pickup trucks were being stored, the military said.

IDF, Shin Bet confirm top Hamas official killed

Also Monday, the IDF and Shin Bet confirmed that top Hamas official Ismail Barhoum was targeted and killed in a strike on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis on Sunday night.

Not long after the strike, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Barhoum had been eliminated. Hamas also made an announcement.

According to the military and Shin Bet, Barhoum, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, was chief of the terror group’s finances and the successor to Issam Da’alis, the de-facto prime minister of Gaza, who was killed last week.

“Barhoum was a key figure in Hamas’ political bureau and was actively involved in the military decision-making process that directly impacted Hamas’s operations,” the joint statement said.

The IDF and Shin Bet said that he oversaw Hamas’s “financial management in the Gaza Strip, channeling funds to Hamas’s military wing, financing and planning the execution of terror attacks against the State of Israel.

“These funds financed the organization’s continued survival in the Gaza Strip and were used to carry out terror attacks and to purchase weapons, which posed a threat to Israeli civilians,” the statement said.

IDF: Barhoum was in the hospital for terrorism, not treatment

While Hamas had claimed Barhoum was at Nasser Hospital for medical treatment after being wounded in a previous strike, the IDF said he was operating from within the medical center.

“This is yet another example of the way that the Hamas terrorist organization systematically violates international law while taking over civilian infrastructure in a manner that prevents the rehabilitation and livelihood of the Gazan population, and while brutally exploiting the civilian population as a human shield for its terror attacks against the State of Israel,” the statement said.

In a separate statement on X, IDF international media spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani reiterated: “The claim that Barhoum was in Nasser Hospital for medical treatment is completely false and was spread to mislead the public and the media.”

The claim that Barhoum was in Nasser hospital for medical treatment is completely false and was spread to mislead the public and the media.

Barhoum was in the hospital in order to commit acts of terrorism, cynically using hospital patients and the population in the area as human…

— LTC Nadav Shoshani (@LTC_Shoshani) March 24, 2025

“Barhoum was in the hospital in order to commit acts of terrorism, cynically using hospital patients and the population in the area as human shields. He remained in the hospital for many weeks, during which he held meetings with other terrorists and senior figures in the terrorist organization,” Shoshani said.

He suggested that “the media refrain from echoing the falsehoods of the Hamas terrorist organization and its members and check the facts before publishing such claims.”

“The Hamas terrorist organization systematically violates international law and takes over civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, in a way that prevents the rehabilitation and livelihood of the civilians of Gaza,” he added.

Al Jazeera reporter, identified as a Hamas sniper, said killed

The Hamas-run Gaza civil defense authority, as well as Al Jazeera, said Monday that Hossam Shabat, a reporter in northern Gaza for the Qatari news station, was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The agency said Shabat was targeted by a drone strike on his car on Monday afternoon near a gas station in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

عاجل | استشهاد الزميل حسام شبات، مراسل الجزيرة مباشر، إثر استهداف مباشر لسيارته من قبل قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي.
إنا لله وإنا إليه راجعون pic.twitter.com/pvug18IGZf

— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) March 24, 2025

The civil defense authority said that Mohamad Mansor, a reporter on the Falstin Al-Yom channel of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was also killed in a separate strike on his home in Khan Younis.

Last October, the IDF said it had uncovered documents in the Gaza Strip that showed Shabat was a sniper in Hamas’s Beit Hanoun Battalion.

According to the army at the time, the documents showed personnel spreadsheets, lists of training courses, telephone books and salary documents that “unequivocally prove” Shabat and five other Al Jazeera personalities were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad’s military wings.

There was no immediate official comment from the IDF on the reports of Shabat’s killing on Monday.

Israeli strike said to hit school-turned-shelter, killing 4

Palestinian medics, meanwhile, said an Israeli strike on Monday hit a school where displaced people were sheltering in the Gaza Strip, killing at least four people, including a child.

Another 18 people were reported wounded in the alleged strike in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp, according to Al-Awda Hospital, which received the casualties.

Three other hospitals had earlier reported 25 deaths from Israeli strikes overnight and into Monday.

There was no immediate comment from the IDF.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said Monday the bodies of 61 people killed by Israeli strikes had been brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours. Hospitals also received 143 wounded, Gaza’s health ministry said in a daily report.

The ministry’s numbers are not independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israeli officials regularly note that the military makes efforts to avoid civilian casualties.

In a statement posted to X on Monday, Defense Minister Israel Katz reiterated: “Israel is not fighting the civilians in Gaza and is doing everything that international law requires to mitigate harm to civilians.”

Katz said Hamas fights from civilian areas, disguised as civilians, and thus puts civilians in danger, and urged non-combatants to evacuate combat areas when instructed to by the IDF.

Thousands said trapped in Rafah as IDF encircles part of it

As the fighting raged, thousands of people were still trapped in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, officials in the Hamas-run Strip said Monday, after Israeli forces, having ordered residents to evacuate, encircled its Tel Sultan neighborhood.

Israel told residents by a single route on foot to al-Mawasi, a sprawling cluster of tent camps along the coast.

Thousands fled, but residents said many were trapped by Israeli forces.

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

Fighting stopped briefly in November 2023 amid a hostage-ceasefire agreement and then stopped again for some two months starting mid-January 2025, when another hostage-truce deal was reached.

The fighting resumed last week, though talks are ongoing to secure the release of more hostages in exchange for another truce.

The IDF has indicated in recent days that it’s preparing to expand ground operations in Gaza, redeploying on Sunday an armored division that had been stationed on the border with Lebanon.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 59 hostages, all but one of whom — a soldier killed in 2014 — were abducted during the October 7 onslaught. Twenty-four are known or presumed to be alive, and 35 have been confirmed dead by the IDF.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.