From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
IDF strike kills newest commander of Hamas’s Shejaiya Battalion, 5th to be eliminated since start of war
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The IDF and Shin Bet announce that an airstrike in Gaza City on Sunday killed the latest commander of Hamas’s Shejaiya Battalion.
Muhammad al-Ajlah is now the fifth commander of the Shejaiya Battalion to be killed by the IDF amid the war.
According to the IDF, during the war, Ajlah headed the Shejaiya Battalion’s combat support company, where he was responsible for “arming the battalion’s terrorists with weapons used to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops.”
Ajlah had replaced Haitham Khalil as head of the Shejaiya Battalion after the latter was killed in an Israeli airstrike on April 9.
Khalil’s predecessor, Jamil Omar Jamil Wadiya, was killed in March. Wadiya had taken over the battalion after his predecessors were killed in December 2023. On December 2, 2023, the IDF killed Shejaiya Battalion commander Wissam Farhat and, a week later, killed his replacement Emad Qariqa.
In the strike on Sunday in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya that killed Ajlah, the IDF says it took steps to mitigate civilian harm.
The Times of Israel Community.