The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday eliminated a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who abducted civilians during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and held them captive, the military said on Monday.
Zaher Brahim Khalil Abu Salem “took part in the abduction of Israeli civilians from their homes and in holding them hostage,” according to the statement.
In addition, he attempted to advance “numerous” attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians during the war sparked by the Hamas-led massacre, the IDF said.
“Abu Salem posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip and was eliminated in an aerial strike,” it added. “Prior to the strike, steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and aerial surveillance.”
Soldiers remain deployed in the enclave in accordance with the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement “and will continue to operate to remove any threat,” the statement concluded.
In a separate statement, the IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) said on Monday that Ismail Masri, Hamas’s head of military defense in the Rafah Brigade, was eliminated in a strike last week.
Described as a “senior figure,” the statement said that Masri throughout the war coordinated Hamas’s military security and counterintelligence fields in the Rafah Brigade and was involved in rehabilitating and rebuilding the terrorist group’s military capabilities, with the objective of carrying out attacks against Israeli forces.
The statement did not specify in which part of Gaza he was killed.
Meanwhile, Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White Party, told JNS at the faction meeting at the Knesset on Monday, in English language remarks, that “we should continue to fight Hamas for two main reasons. One, it will threaten the citizens of Israel around Gaza if we don’t take care of it. And second, it will intercept any positive [diplomatic] progress that we might have with other countries, as it tried to do before.”
Gantz was referring to Hamas’s declared intention to drive a wedge between Israel and additional Muslim countries, notably Saudi Arabia, that might consider joining the Abraham Accords forged in 2020.
The former IDF chief added that since no one else will be willing to fight Hamas, “the day will come” that Israel will have to renew its war against the terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.
The current truce went into effect in Gaza 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. They murdered some 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 more into the enclave.
On Thursday, the IDF killed a Hamas commander who directed the kidnapping of civilians during the Oct. 7 attacks, the army announced over the weekend.
Walid Haniyeh, who served as the deputy commander of a Nukhba Force company in Hamas’s “military wing,” was a nephew of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, whom Israel assassinated in Tehran in July 2024.
On Friday, the IDF killed three operatives in Hamas’s naval police unit, including the commander in the central camps sector, according to a separate statement on Sunday.
Mansour Sami Mahmoud Shahtout and two other terrorists “were traveling in a vehicle while armed with weapons, and as such posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip,” the army stated.
