The Israel Defense Forces has eliminated a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander who led a terrorist cell that took hostages during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the military said on Tuesday.
Muhammad Khalil Muhammad Aslam, identified as a platoon commander of an Islamic Jihad Nukhba cell, was killed in an airstrike in the Khan Yunis area of southern Gaza, according to the statement.
“In recent months, Aslam advanced attacks targeting IDF troops and Israeli civilians,” it stated. “The terrorist posed an immediate threat and was eliminated in a precise aerial strike.”
Soldiers remain deployed in the enclave in accordance with the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement “and will continue to operate to remove any immediate threat,” it said.
The current ceasefire went into effect in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 10, 2025, ending the two-year war that began when Hamas, other Palestinian terrorist groups and Gazan civilians invaded the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023.
In a separate statement on Wednesday, the IDF said it had struck several Hamas weapons storage sites in central and northern Gaza over the past week, including one that had been established inside a mosque.
The depots contained weapons intended for use against soldiers operating along the ceasefire line, as well as Israeli civilians, “and were dismantled in order to remove the threat,” according to the military.
The weapons storage site inside a mosque “is an additional example of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip exploiting civilian infrastructure for terrorist purposes by storing weapons in the heart of the civilian population, including in religious sites, to facilitate terrorist activity,” the IDF said.
