IDF says strikes in Gaza City killed Nukhba members and a PIJ anti-tank commander

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it carried out a strike on Saturday against a gathering of members of Hamas's Nukhba force in Gaza City, killing several operatives from the group's military wing. In a statement released by the IDF spokesperson, the military identified two of the dead. One was Muad Mazen Hamza Hassouna; the other, it said, was Muhammad Riyad Khader Arahim.

In a second, separate strike, the military said it killed Muhammad Walid Saadi Nakhala, whom it described as the commander of the anti-tank array in the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Times of Israel reported that, according to Palestinian media, the strike on the Nukhba meeting happened near Panda Mall in Gaza City and left four people dead and six others wounded.

Who the IDF says it targeted

Nukhba, a word meaning "elite" in Arabic, is the name of a special forces unit within the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. Israeli officials and media identify Nukhba fighters as the core of the force that led the cross-border assault on southern Israel at the start of the current war, and the IDF has since made locating them a declared priority. The military did not say in its statement what role, if any, the two named men played in that attack.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, often shortened to PIJ, is an armed group in Gaza that operates separately from Hamas, with its own command structure and military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades. The two groups have frequently coordinated against Israel. In Israeli military usage, an "anti-tank array" refers to the part of an armed organisation responsible for guided missiles and other weapons aimed at armoured vehicles and troops. The Hebrew term in the IDF's original post, written with the abbreviation for anti-tank, reflects that usage.

According to the IDF's post on X, those targeted had recently been advancing attacks against Israeli troops and working to rebuild the capabilities of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The military did not publish evidence for these claims, and the post as available in the material is cut off before its final sentence.

Where the strikes took place

Gaza City is the largest urban centre in the Gaza Strip and lies in its northern part. The Tuffah neighbourhood, where the IDF said Nakhala was killed, is in the east of the city. The sources describe the location slightly differently: The Times of Israel referred to Tuffah as a neighbourhood of Gaza City, while the IDF's English post on X spoke of the Tuffah area in northern Gaza. The two descriptions are compatible but not identical.

The Panda Mall location for the strike on the Nukhba gathering comes from Palestinian media as cited by The Times of Israel, not from the IDF, which said only that the meeting was in Gaza City.

How the reports differ on numbers

The IDF said "several" Hamas operatives were killed in the strike on the meeting, naming two. A brief alert from Ynet, the news site of the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, said the military reported that two Nukhba operatives had been killed in the Strip, without mentioning a larger total.

Palestinian media, as reported by The Times of Israel, gave a figure of four dead and six wounded at the Panda Mall site. These reports did not say how many of those killed were members of armed groups, and the IDF did not give its own casualty figure.

The Israeli outlet News.co.il reported a wider tally for the day, saying 8 people were killed in 4 IDF strikes across the Strip, among them several Nukhba operatives and the Islamic Jihad anti-tank commander. That figure covers more strikes than the two the IDF described in detail, and the outlet did not break it down.

How this fits the IDF's reporting pattern

The announcement was issued as a recap of activity over the past 24 hours, a format the IDF uses regularly to list named militants it says it has killed. Such statements typically give names and roles but rarely include details of the intelligence behind a strike or of any civilian harm. Casualty figures from the Palestinian side are generally reported by local media and Gaza health authorities, and they often differ from Israeli accounts.

What the reports do not say

• None of the reports gives an exact time for either strike beyond saying the Nukhba meeting was hit earlier on Saturday.
• The IDF did not say how many Hamas operatives in total were killed at the meeting, only that the two named men were among them.
• The identities of the four people Palestinian media said were killed near Panda Mall, and whether they include the two men named by the IDF, are not given.
• No report gives casualty figures for the strike in Tuffah beyond the death of Nakhala.
• Neither Hamas nor Palestinian Islamic Jihad is quoted in the material confirming or disputing the deaths.
• The truncated IDF post on X does not make clear what wider context the military gave for the strikes.