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Friday, January 24, 2025
Hamas confirms deaths of senior officials months after Israel said they were killed in airstrike
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
Months after they were killed, Hamas acknowledges that an Israeli airstrike last summer eliminated Rawhi Mushtaha, the de facto prime minister of the Gaza Strip, along with another top official.
The Israel Defense Forces said in October 2024 that an airstrike on a tunnel in northern Gaza three months earlier had killed Mushtaha, along with Hamas officials Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio in Hamas’s political bureau, and Sami Odeh, the head of Hamas’s “general security mechanism.”
Hamas in a statement confirms the deaths of Mushtaha and Odeh.