The Israeli army claimed this Saturday to have killed the number two of Hamas’s armed wing, Raad Saad, in a drone strike against his vehicle in Gaza. Although the Islamist movement has not confirmed the death, it is in any case Hamas’s highest-profile target. Health sources in the Strip put the death toll from the bombing at five, which Hamas has interpreted as a new example of the will of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government to “undermine and derail the ceasefire agreement by escalating its continued violations.”
Israel has justified this by saying that Saad was leading and placing explosives to ambush troops in the 58% of Gaza that the Israeli army controls as a result of the ceasefire. The offices of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz have issued a statement explaining that they ordered the assassination after an explosive injured two soldiers hours before.
The army has released an aerial image of the moment when a missile launched by a drone hits the last of three cars traveling along Rashid, the highway that connects Gaza from north to south parallel to the coast. Later photographs from the field show the burned car, with a blood stain on the ground. The Armed Forces have presented Saad as the head of weapons production for the Hamas militia and one of the architects of the October 2023 attack, which caused some 1,200 deaths and led to a two-year invasion.
Although this is an exceptional attack, due to the magnitude of the objective, the Israeli army has been bombing Gaza almost daily in violation of the ceasefire. They tend to be specific attacks in the face of what he describes as attempts by Hamas to reorganize and rearm in the area it controls, despite its weakness. The bombings are particularly violent and prolonged when the army reports a previous ambush against its troops. This is what happened, killing more than one hundred Palestinians, or on November 20, 32. The majority, in both cases, were minors and women.
Since the architect of the permanent truce agreement, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, declared in early October, fire from Israeli drones, fighter jets, machine guns and tanks has killed nearly 400 people in the tiny Palestinian Strip, according to hospital counts. Three Israeli soldiers have also been killed in surprise attacks by Palestinian militants, according to the army.
