IDF: Top Hamas operative who directed West Bank terror killed in recent Gaza strike
Military says Nael Sakhel targeted on July 24; IDF targets northern Gaza rocket launch site used in recent attack on southern Israel, denies involvement in aid worker’s death
A senior Hamas member in Gaza who was involved in directing terror attacks in the West Bank was killed in an airstrike two weeks ago, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Thursday, while Air Force jets struck dozens of targets belonging to terror groups in the Strip over the past day.
According to the military, Nael Sakhel was targeted on July 24, and a few days later, intelligence was received indicating that he had been killed.
Sakhel had been a member of Hamas’s so-called West Bank headquarters for more than a decade, the IDF said. The Gaza-based unit is charged with directing attacks on Israel from or within the West Bank.
According to the IDF, Sakhel was involved in funding and providing weapons to terror cells in the West Bank.
He was first detained by Israel in 2003 and sentenced to life over involvement in a suicide bombing in Israel. He was then released and exiled to Gaza in a 2011 deal, in which Israel exchanged 1,027 terror convicts for captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
Hamas leader in Gaza Yayha Sinwar, who was chosen this week to replace the terror group’s slain politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, was also released in the Shalit deal.
ارتِقاء ابن نابلِس الشَّهيد القسَّامي نائل سعدي السخل اثر قصفٍ صهيونيّ غاشم مُقبلًا غير مُدبر بإذنِ الله.
ترجَّل بعد مسيرة جهاديَّة تعرَّض فيها لكُل أساليب التَّرهيب والتضييق من إصابة ومطاردة حتى انتهى به الحال أن يكونَ مُبعدًا إلى غزَّة بعد تحرُّره من سجون المحتل في صفقة شاليط. pic.twitter.com/9ZnpE83jsB
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On Thursday, meanwhile, the military said that the IAF struck targets including a rocket launching site in northern Gaza, used in a recent attack on southern Israel.
During simultaneous operations in southern Gaza’s Rafah, the IDF said that troops with the 162nd Division raided Hamas sites, killed gunmen in close-quarters combat, and demolished infrastructure belonging to terror groups, including a booby-trapped building in the Tel Sultan neighborhood.
The 252nd Division was also continuing operations in the Netzarim Corridor of central Gaza, according to the IDF update, and reservists with the division’s Jerusalem Brigade directed an airstrike against an observation post in the area.
Also Thursday, the IDF said it was not involved in the reported death of a member of the World Central Kitchen organization in the Strip, four months after seven staffers were killed by Israeli strikes in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.
“According to a preliminary examination and the information emerging from the conversation with the WCK organization, there is no known incident of harm to an employee of the organization while working in the last few days,” the IDF said in response to a query, adding that the military “examines each unusual incident individually.”
WCK had said that Nadi Sallout was killed in the Deir al-Balah area, while apparently off-duty. It did not assign blame for his death.
The Wednesday report by the food charity came as Israeli fighter jets struck rocket launchers located near aid warehouses in southern Gaza and a weapons manufacturing plant that was embedded within an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.
The Hamas launchers had been used for recent rocket attacks on southern Israel, the army said.
The fighting came amid pinpoint operations in Gaza in the ongoing war against Hamas, sparked by the terror group’s brutal October 7 onslaught in southern Israel that saw 1,200 people murdered and 251 taken hostage.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 331.
