The Israel Defense Forces, in an airstrike in northern Gaza on Tuesday, eliminated the head of the operations department in Hamas’s intelligence headquarters, the military said on Wednesday.
Terrorist Iyad Ahmed Abd al-Rahman Shambari took an “active part” in planning the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel, according to the IDF.
In addition, Shambari was responsible for compiling Hamas’s “operational situational assessment” of the entire Strip in recent years, it said.
The terrorist was said to have served as a “key figure” tasked with gathering intelligence on Israeli soldiers “in order to direct and execute attack plans.” He posed an immediate threat to troops, the IDF added.
Soldiers remain deployed in the enclave in accordance with the U.S.-brokered Oct. 10, 2025, 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.
Senior members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace were set to meet with Hamas representatives in Cairo this week for talks on disarmament, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.
Top Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashaal and Musa Abu Marzouk, have rejected key parts of Trump’s plan in recent months, including disarmament, despite having agreed to the proposal in October.
However, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a founding member of the Board of Peace, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that “the hope resides in the substantial progress made in the implementation of the president’s plan.”
“Hamas—and every other armed group in Gaza—should disarm, decommission weapons as part of a Palestinian-led process with monitored and verified implementation,” he reiterated.
“Hamas, as presently constituted, can have no role in governing Gaza. Not directly running the government of Gaza. Not indirectly by retaining their weapons and therefore their power,” added Blair.
Meanwhile, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari told reporters in Doha on Tuesday that “we are continuing our role in the mediation” between Hamas and Israel.
“There is momentum in the talks, with the developments that are taking place, and we are part of that momentum,” he said, responding to reports that Qatar stopped its mediation.
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s “military wing,” earlier this month denounced calls for its disarmament under Trump’s ceasefire plan as “extremely dangerous.”
In a televised statement translated by Reuters, a Hamas spokesman said that raising the issue of demilitarization “in a crude manner” is unacceptable.
“What the enemy is trying to push through today against the Palestinian resistance, via our brotherly mediators, is extremely dangerous,” said Abu Obeida, a nom de guerre used by Hamas spokesmen.
The statement said Washington’s demands for disarmament were “nothing but an overt attempt to continue the genocide against our people, something we will not accept under any circumstances.”
