The Israel Defense Forces on Monday confirmed that it had eliminated a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who took part in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, in which 15 people were massacred.
Alaa al-Din Abd al-Nasser Hasan Khudari, the Nukhba commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Gaza City Brigade, was killed in retaliatory airstrikes following Hamas’s Nov. 22 truce violation, the IDF said.
After a Palestinian gunman opened fire on IDF soldiers in southern Gaza on Nov. 22, the Israeli military struck “terrorist targets, terrorists and commanders belonging to terrorist organizations,” according to the statement.
The Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem said at the time that the military had eliminated five senior terrorists in response to the attack. “Israel has fully honored the ceasefire, Hamas has not,” added the PMO.
Khudari’s death was confirmed “after an intelligence assessment,” the IDF said Tuesday. “The terrorist infiltrated Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the brutal October 7 massacre, and throughout the war, he orchestrated attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians.”
In separate statements Monday, the IDF said it had eliminated three terrorists who crossed Gaza’s ceasefire line.
In two incidents in northern Gaza, IDF troops fired on and killed a terrorist who had crossed the so-called Yellow Line and posed an immediate threat, the military said.
Meanwhile, in the central Gaza Strip, IDF soldiers carried out an airstrike on a terrorist who had crossed the line and threatened Israeli forces.
Since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, Israeli security forces have pulled back to a line running through the northern, eastern and southern Gaza Strip, holding control of roughly half the territory.
On Saturday, the IDF eliminated three suspected terrorists who crossed the Yellow Line in the southern Gaza Strip and approached soldiers.
The ceasefire, brokered by the U.S., Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, effectively ended the war that began when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel’s northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 251 others into the Gaza Strip.