Israeli strike kills senior Hamas commander in Gaza City

Israeli forces carried out a strike in Gaza City on May 15 that killed Izz al-Din al-Haddad, also known inside Hamas as Abu Suhaib. The strike removed the most senior Hamas military commander with operational authority inside Gaza. With his death, Hamas lost the last figure described as capable of exercising unified battlefield control over its forces in the territory.

Background on the commander Abu Suhaib was one of Hamas’s founding members, a longtime brigade commander, and former head of the group’s internal security apparatus. ” After Mohammed Sinwar’s death in May 2025, Abu Suhaib assumed command of Hamas’s al Qassam Brigades in Gaza.

He oversaw an estimated 27,000 fighters and roughly 390 kilometers of tunnels concentrated in the northern sector. Israeli intelligence assessments linked him to the October 7, 2023 attacks. According to those assessments, he distributed written operational orders to Hamas battalion commanders the night before the assault that killed 1,200 people and resulted in the kidnapping of 251 others.

Hamas structure Israeli operations have destroyed or severely degraded 23 of Hamas’s 24 battalions as organized fighting forces. Much of the group’s tunnel infrastructure has been rendered unusable and its logistics networks disrupted. Before the war, Hamas reportedly controlled roughly $700 million in cash reserves.

During the conflict, the organization diverted hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to finance tunnel construction, weapons procurement, and military operations. Abu Suhaib was embedded in that system and remained a committed opponent of any postwar arrangement that would dismantle Hamas’s military power.

His death breaks the final link in Hamas’s centralized military command inside Gaza. The United States operates a Civil-Military Coordination Center in southern Israel to oversee the October 2025 ceasefire arrangements. Repeated Hamas violations have contributed to continued violence inside Gaza against civilians and anti-Hamas forces operating in the Strip.