IDF Says It Killed the Commander Who Raided Nahal Oz

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had killed Alaa al-Din Abd al-Nasser Hassan Khudari, whom it identified as the Nukhba official of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in its Gaza City Brigade, a reference to the elite assault formations that spearheaded the attack of 7 October 2023. According to the military, Khudari took part in the raid on Kibbutz Nahal Oz that day and went on to lead attacks against Israeli forces and civilians through the war.

The military said the killing followed a violation of the Gaza ceasefire on 22 November 2025, when it said Hamas gunmen fired at Israeli troops. Israel responded with air strikes against fighters and commanders across the Gaza Strip, and the IDF said that a subsequent intelligence assessment confirmed Khudari had been killed in one of them. The Times of Israel, reporting the announcement, rendered his name as Alaa Khudar and described him as chief of Islamic Jihad’s elite forces in Gaza City.

What happened at Nahal Oz

Kibbutz Nahal Oz lies close to the Gaza Strip, alongside an IDF observation base of the same name that stood about 850 metres from the border. Both were overrun on 7 October 2023. According to an IDF investigation summarised in reference accounts of the attack, 53 soldiers were killed at the base and ten taken captive, among them seven female surveillance soldiers; the base had been built to withstand rocket fire rather than a ground assault and had gaps in its perimeter. In the kibbutz itself, the investigation found thirteen residents killed, including members of the community security team, and eight members taken to Gaza. It was one of the deadliest single locations of the day.

The ceasefire and the November flare-up

The strike that the IDF says killed Khudari came during one of the sharpest tests of the truce that took effect on 10 October 2025. The Times of Israel reported that on 22 November a Palestinian gunman opened fire on Israeli troops on the army’s side of the Yellow Line, the boundary dividing Israeli-held ground in Gaza from the area under Hamas control. Israel called it a blatant violation and struck back; Gaza’s civil defence reported 21 people killed, while Israeli officials said five senior Hamas commanders were among the dead. It was one of the deadliest days in the territory since the ceasefire began, and both sides accused the other of breaking it.

Confirming a death weeks later

The IDF said the identification rested on what it called an intelligence decryption (corroboration drawn from intercepted communications, imagery or other sources) rather than an immediate battlefield assessment. That is why the name emerged well after the event: the announcement came nine days after the ceasefire violation that set off the strikes.

What is still unclear

The military statement gave no date or location for the specific strike that killed Khudari, no account of how the confirmation was obtained, and no detail of what he is alleged to have done at Nahal Oz beyond taking part in the raid. It did not say whether anyone else was killed alongside him. Islamic Jihad did not confirm the death in the statement, and the transliteration of his name differs between the Israeli announcement and English-language coverage.