IDF says Gaza City strikes killed Islamic Jihad rocket officer and Hamas sniper

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say they killed two Palestinian militants in separate strikes in Gaza City on Monday, one from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and one from Hamas. According to the IDF spokesperson's statement, the first strike hit the Daraj Tuffah area and killed Abdullah Munir Mahmoud Harz, whom the military describes as deputy commander of a platoon within the Islamic Jihad rocket array.

The second strike, also carried out on Monday within Gaza City, targeted Muhammad Wael Mustafa Sha'sha'a, identified by the military as a sniper with the Daraj Tuffah Battalion in Hamas's armed wing, The Times of Israel reported, citing the army. The announcement was made later in the week, and was carried in Hebrew by Ynet and News.co.il.

What the military alleges

In a post on its English-language X account, the IDF said both men had pushed forward attacks aimed at Israeli civilians and soldiers, and had worked to rebuild their organisations' military capabilities. The army framed this activity as taking place "in systematic violation of the ceasefire" and said the two were targeted to remove the threat it says they posed.

The Hebrew outlet News.co.il summarised the same claims, attributing them to the IDF spokesperson: that the two promoted plots against troops and civilians and acted to restore their groups' military strength. None of these allegations has been independently confirmed in the reports available.

Who the groups are

Hamas is the Islamist movement that has controlled the Gaza Strip and is the largest armed faction there. Its military wing is organised into geographic brigades and battalions; the Daraj Tuffah Battalion named by the IDF takes its title from the neighbourhoods it operates in. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, often shortened in Hebrew to the acronym Ga"p, is a smaller armed group that operates alongside Hamas in Gaza and has long maintained its own rocket arsenal. The IDF uses the phrase "rocket array" for the command structure responsible for a group's rocket launches; a deputy platoon commander would sit at a junior to middle level within that structure.

The IDF's statements use the Hebrew military term usually rendered in English as "eliminated", the standard wording in Israeli military announcements of targeted killings.

Where the strikes happened

Daraj and Tuffah are adjacent, densely built neighbourhoods in Gaza City, the largest urban area in the territory. The IDF's statement places the strikes in the northern Gaza Strip, while The Times of Israel and its military correspondent Emanuel Fabian locate them in Gaza City. These descriptions are consistent: Gaza City lies in the north of the Strip.

The ceasefire context

The military's statement refers to a ceasefire in Gaza and presents the killings as a response to violations of it. Announcements of this kind, in which the IDF names individual militants it says were preparing attacks or rearming, have become a recurring feature of the period since the truce took hold. The reports do not describe any response from Hamas or Islamic Jihad to these particular strikes.

A discrepancy in the descriptions

The accounts differ slightly on what Harz was doing. The opening of the IDF's Telegram statement says that Harz, the Islamic Jihad rocket officer, advanced sniper attacks against IDF troops. The Times of Israel and Emanuel Fabian's report, as well as the IDF's own post on X, instead describe the two men together as having advanced attacks on soldiers and civilians, without assigning sniper activity specifically to Harz. The Hebrew text of the IDF statement, embedded in The Times of Israel's report, also links Harz to sniping plots. The available material does not resolve whether this reflects his actual role or a drafting overlap between the two men's descriptions.

What the reports do not say

The reports do not give a time of day for either strike, or say whether they were carried out by aircraft, drones or other means. They do not say whether anyone else was killed or injured, and no Palestinian source, including Gaza health officials or the two militant groups, is cited confirming the deaths or the identities of those killed. The IDF does not specify which attacks the men were allegedly planning, when, or against which targets, nor does it explain why the announcement came days after the strikes. The English version of the IDF Telegram statement available to us is cut off partway through, so its full wording could not be reviewed.