Senior Hamas commander who helped plot October 7 attacks killed in Israeli airstrike

A senior Hamas commander who helped to plot the October 7 attack has been killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Samir Abu Younis was killed, and others were wounded, in an airstrike that targeted him on a street in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, confirmed the 53-year-old commander of the group's Rafah brigade was killed on Saturday.

The Israeli military said it had struck a senior commander in Hamas' armed wing but did not identify him.

Abu Younis joined the terror group's armed wing in 1991 and had held several senior operational roles in Rafah before becoming commander of the brigade, according to a Hamas spokesman.

Hamas said his funeral would be held on Sunday afternoon in Khan Younis.

An October 2025 ceasefire halted major fighting but has not stopped Israeli attacks or secured Hamas' disarmament.

Gaza health authorities say at least 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire went into effect, with five Israeli soldiers killed during the same period.

Earlier this week, an Israeli airstrike on southern Gaza's main hospital overnight killed at least six Palestinians, including a surgeon and a teenage boy.

The strike hit a building containing surgery wards at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Israel's military said it targeted a senior commander and accused Hamas of using the hospital complex to plan attacks, something which the group denies.

Medics and witnesses said two missiles crashed through the roof of the five-storey building, causing extensive damage.

The surgery department, which serves half of Gaza's two million people, was knocked out of service.

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President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which oversees the ceasefire agreement and a broader peace plan, called on both Israel and Hamas to honour the deal, in a rare response to an individual attack.

Ayman Abu Obeid, a doctor who was injured in the attack, said he was on an overnight shift in the hospital when an explosion ripped through the room where he and others were sleeping.

He said: "All of a sudden the world turned upside down. It went dark all at once."

In a statement on the hospital strike, Israel's military said it targeted a person named Muhammad Abu Ismail, describing him as "the commander of Hamas' Khan Younis Brigade", who was "hiding inside the Nasser Hospital."

Hamas rejected the military's claim that it had used the hospital as a base for operations, but did not confirm whether a leader from the group had been targeted, injured or killed in the strike.

Since the start of the Gaza war, Israel's military has struck the Nasser Hospital complex at least seven times, hospital officials say.

World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "Gaza's health facilities are lifelines for its people. They must be protected. They must never be militarised or attacked."

In August 2025, the hospital was hit by a double-tap Israeli attack that killed at least 20 people, including journalists and health workers.

Both attacking hospitals and their use for military purposes are typically considered breaches of international law.

Although medical facilities can lose their protected status under certain conditions, rights groups say Israel has not shown sufficient evidence in many cases to justify its attacks on them during the war.