IDF and Shin Bet say four Hamas operatives killed in Khan Younis and Rafah

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, said they killed four members of Hamas's military wing in two separate strikes in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. According to the joint announcement published by the IDF spokesperson, one strike hit the Khan Younis area and a second hit the Rafah area. Haaretz reported that the joint statement was issued on Friday, two days after the strikes.

The military named the man killed in Khan Younis as a member of Hamas's Nukhba force and said the Rafah strike killed several operatives, among them a Hamas commander. In a post on X, the IDF said the four had recently been promoting attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers and working to rebuild Hamas's capabilities, which it described as being "in systematic violation of the ceasefire." The army said they were targeted to remove the threat it said they posed.

Who the military says was killed

The IDF identified the man killed in Khan Younis as Muhammad Alian Biyuk. The Times of Israel rendered the same name as Mohammed Alyan al-Bayouk. Arabic names are often transliterated into English in more than one way, and the spellings in the reports differ accordingly.

For the Rafah strike, the IDF's English statement as captured in the material names Al-Hamam Jaber Al-Sayed Abu Labda as a Hamas commander, and the text then breaks off. The Times of Israel, citing the military, spelled the commander's name Hammam Jaber al-Sayed Abu Labda. It identified Mahmoud Abu Naameh and Mohammed Hamad Shariq Abu Sultan as the two other men who died in Rafah.

The Shin Bet and the Nukhba force

The Shin Bet, also known as the Israel Security Agency (ISA), is responsible for internal security and intelligence, and it routinely issues joint statements with the army when its intelligence feeds into military operations. The Hebrew term Nukhba translates roughly as "elite," and The Times of Israel described the unit as Hamas's elite force. The IDF uses the term to single out operatives it considers part of the group's top fighting ranks.

Where the strikes took place

Khan Younis and Rafah are both in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, the coastal territory bordering Israel and Egypt. Rafah sits at the southern edge of the strip, along the Egyptian border, while Khan Younis lies a short distance to its north. Both areas were named in the statement as sites of Wednesday's strikes.

A disputed account of a phone call

The Times of Israel also relayed a report by the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat about the Khan Younis strike. According to that newspaper, the Shin Bet phoned Bayouk before the strike and told him to choose between dying together with his family or dying by himself on the roof of the building. Asharq Al-Awsat reported that he went up to the roof and was killed there. Emanuel Fabian, the Times of Israel's military correspondent, presented this as the Saudi paper's account. The IDF and Shin Bet statement in the material does not mention any such call, and no Israeli official body is quoted confirming it.

How Israeli outlets covered it

Hebrew-language outlets carried the announcement within minutes. N12 reported that four Hamas operatives were killed in two strikes, one of them a Nukhba member and another a commander, and attached an image credited to the IDF spokesperson. Ynet carried a brief alert attributing the four deaths in Rafah and Khan Younis to the army and the Shin Bet.

What the reports do not say

The reports do not explain what specific attacks the four men are alleged to have been planning, or what evidence the military relied on. They do not say whether anyone other than the four named men was killed or injured in either strike, and they give no response from Hamas or from health authorities in Gaza. The material does not describe the terms of the ceasefire the IDF says was violated. The Asharq Al-Awsat account of a warning call rests on that single newspaper and has not been confirmed by the IDF or the Shin Bet in any of the reports. The Rafah portion of the IDF's own English statement is cut off in the material, so the names of two of the Rafah dead come from The Times of Israel's account of the military's announcement.