Drone strike on Hamas police post in Mawasi kills 5; names of dead released

Update, 1 November, 14:07 Israel time

Abu Ali Express has published the names of the five men it says were killed in the strike on the Hamas police post in Khan Younis. The Israeli Telegram channel listed them as follows (transliterated from Hebrew):

• Mohammed Zakaria Shaker al-Jamal
• Bassam Naaman Murad Miqdad
• Mohammed Amin Mahmoud al-Nims
• Shaher Mohammed Ahmidan Zaarab
• Mohammed Ali Hussein Abu Shaar

The channel did not give their ages, ranks or roles, or say where the names came from.

Separately, The Times of Israel reported that Hamas-affiliated media in Gaza were putting the toll from the two strikes at 8, citing a post by the Palestinian Information Center. According to those outlets, the Khan Younis strike hit a police unit south of Mawasi, while the Gaza City strike hit what they described as a group of civilians. A child was among those killed in Gaza City, the reports said, without giving the child's age.

The Times of Israel noted that the Hamas-affiliated reports did not break the toll down by strike. Abu Ali Express had earlier attributed 3 deaths to the Gaza City strike; the two accounts together are consistent with the overall figure of 8 but come from different chains of sourcing. The Times of Israel also said there was no comment from the IDF.

The story as first reported

Five people were killed when a drone struck a Hamas police position in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian reports relayed by Israeli news channels. Ynet's alerts service cited Palestinian reports of 5 dead in a drone strike in the south of the Strip, without naming the target or saying who carried out the attack.

The Israeli Telegram news channel Abu Ali Express gave more detail. It said Gazan journalists were reporting 5 dead after a strike on a Hamas police post in farmland in Mawasi, an area that once held the Gush Katif settlements, and that a second strike in Gaza City killed 3 more people. By its count, 8 people were killed in two strikes within roughly an hour.

The second strike, in Gaza City

According to Abu Ali Express, the second attack hit al-Thawra Street, close to the Taj Mall shopping centre and a sweet shop it identified as al-Kassi, in the Rimal neighbourhood of western Gaza City. It reported 3 Gazans killed there. None of the other reports below mention the Gaza City strike, so that part of the account rests on a single outlet relaying Gazan journalists.

How the reports describe the dead

The outlets characterise those killed in Mawasi differently. Ynet and Abu Ali Express both frame the figure as a death toll drawn from Palestinian or Gazan reporting. News.co.il, another Israeli Telegram news channel, said an Israeli army drone had struck 5 Hamas operatives who were at a police post in Khan Younis, and described the event as part of a continuing campaign against Hamas members in Gaza.

The tallies also differ. Abu Ali Express gives 8 dead across two strikes in the space of an hour. News.co.il says 9 militants had been killed since the morning, a figure that may cover a longer period and additional incidents. The reports do not reconcile these numbers, and this article does not attempt to.

Where Mawasi is

Mawasi is a strip of sandy coastal land on the southwestern edge of the Gaza Strip, running along the Mediterranean west of Khan Younis, one of the territory's main southern cities. Much of it is agricultural. Part of the area was once the site of Gush Katif, a bloc of Israeli settlements in southern Gaza that were dismantled and evacuated when Israel withdrew its civilians and forces from the Strip. Abu Ali Express placed the police post in farmland on the grounds of those former settlements.

Rimal, the site of the second reported strike, is a central neighbourhood in western Gaza City, in the north of the Strip, and has historically been one of the city's main commercial districts.

Terms used in the reports

The Hebrew reports use the word katbam, an acronym for an unmanned aerial vehicle, meaning a drone. Israeli media routinely use it for armed drones operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel's military.

The reports refer to the target as a post of the Hamas police. Hamas, the Islamist movement that has governed the Gaza Strip, also runs the territory's civil police and internal security bodies. Israel has long treated Hamas security structures as part of the group's apparatus, while Palestinian sources often describe police personnel as civilian officers. The reports here reflect that split: one outlet calls the dead operatives, while the others report them simply as people killed.

Sourcing

All four items in the material are short Hebrew-language Telegram posts from Israeli news channels. Abu Ali Express published its account twice within a few minutes, and the second post repeats the first. None of the outlets is reporting from the scene: each relays what Palestinian or Gazan reporters were saying. The repeated Abu Ali Express post again attributes the figures to Gazan journalists rather than to an official body.

What the reports do not say

No statement from the IDF appears in the material, so there is no Israeli military confirmation of either strike, its target or its reasoning. Only News.co.il explicitly says the drone was Israeli; Ynet and Abu Ali Express describe a strike without stating who carried it out.

The reports do not name any of the dead or give their ages or roles beyond the description of a police post. They do not say whether anyone was wounded, whether the Gaza Health Ministry or another Palestinian authority issued figures, or what, if anything, prompted the strikes. They also do not explain how News.co.il's count of 9 since the morning relates to the 8 deaths reported by Abu Ali Express, or whether the Gaza City strike was aimed at a particular person.