IDF says Al Jazeera reporter wounded yesterday is also a Hamas deputy commander

Ismail Abu Omar, an Al Jazeera reporter who was wounded in an Israeli airstrike near southern Gaza’s Rafah yesterday, is also a Hamas commander, according to the IDF.

Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, says that Abu Omar, in addition to working for the Qatari-owned station, serves as a deputy company commander in Hamas’s East Khan Younis Battalion.

On the morning of October 7, Abu Omar infiltrated into Israel and filmed from inside Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’s onslaught.

In the strike yesterday, Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmad Matar was also wounded.

The IDF earlier this week revealed that another Al Jazeera journalist is a Hamas commander, and last month, two Al Jazeera journalists killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah were later accused by the IDF of being members of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups.