Terror group confirms death of Ismail Barhoum, whom Defense Minister Katz says was new ‘Hamas PM in Gaza’; army deploys third division to southern Israel to join ground operation
Ismail Barhoum, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, was killed on Sunday evening in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel said it had targeted and killed Barhoum at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, referring to him as a “key Hamas terrorist,” as the Palestinian terror group confirmed his death and said he had been undergoing treatment after being injured in a previous strike.
Defense Minister Israel Katz in a statement hailed the killing of Barhoum, saying he was “the new Hamas prime minister in Gaza, who replaced Issam Da’alis, the previous prime minister who was eliminated a few days ago.”
The Israel Defense Forces said the strike was carried out following “an extensive intelligence-gathering process,” and that a “precision munition” was used to mitigate harm to civilians.
Footage from the scene showed that the hospital building was largely undamaged in the strike, except for fire blazing in one section off a stairwell.
The attack killed at least five people, according to Palestinian medics, and footage on social media appeared to show people extricating bodies and injured people from the rubble.
“The Hamas terrorist organization exploits civilian infrastructure while brutally endangering the Gazan population. The cynical use of an active hospital as a shelter for the planning and executing of murderous terrorist attacks is in direct violation of international law,” the IDF statement read.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at the hospital, and a Hamas source told AFP that “Barhoum was receiving treatment after sustaining critical injuries in an airstrike targeting his home in Khan Younis at dawn last Tuesday.”
The strike on the hospital that killed Barhoum was caught on camera by both Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic.
He was at least the fourth member of Hamas’s political bureau killed since last Tuesday, when Israel resumed airstrikes in the territory after an impasse over continuing a ceasefire. Earlier Sunday, an Israeli airstrike near Khan Younis killed Salah al-Bardawil, another senior member of its political bureau.
Barhoum was a member of Hamas’s political wing and had been involved in financial activities for the terror group, according to the European Union, which placed sanctions on him last year. He was also reported to have dealt with Hamas’s finances.
Out of the 20 members of Hamas’s political bureau elected in 2021, 11 have been assassinated during the war in Gaza. Seven are either certain or highly likely to be outside the Gaza Strip.
In a separate announcement on Sunday, the IDF and Shin Bet security agency said two senior Hamas military wing commanders had been killed in recent airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.
According to the army, Ahmad Salman ‘Awj Shimali, the deputy commander of the Gaza City Brigade, and Jamil Omar Jamil Wadiya, the commander of the brigade’s Shejaiya Battalion, were killed in airstrikes in recent days. The military did not detail where or when they were killed.
According to the IDF, Shimali was “responsible for operations, planning the offensive strategy and building the brigade’s force in preparation for Hamas’s brutal massacre on October 7, [2023],” and during the war, he was responsible for the deployment of the brigade’s force.
Wadiya took over the Shejaiya Battalion after his predecessors were killed in December 2023, according to the army. On December 2, 2023, the IDF killed Shejaiya Battalion commander Wissam Farhat and, a week later, it killed his replacement Emad Qariqa.
“Wadiya was responsible for deploying the battalion’s forces against IDF troops and operated to restore and reorganize the battalion,” the military said.
The statement added that Wadiya was also involved in a 2011 anti-tank missile attack on an Israeli school bus driving near the Gaza border. The attack killed 16-year-old Daniel Viflic.
Major mobilization of troops to Gaza
Following the killing of Barhoum, Katz said that the ongoing offensive against Hamas was “expanding,” vowing that Israel would continue its strikes until the 59 hostages still held by terrorists in Gaza are released.
The IDF said Sunday that thousands of troops were preparing to join military operations in Gaza, ramping up the military’s renewed ground offensive against the terror group, which has thus far been carried out with relatively limited forces.
The army’s 36th Division, which spent months in the north and took part in a ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, was redeployed to the Southern Command and had begun preparations for military operations in the Gaza Strip, the IDF said.
Currently, only the IDF’s Gaza Division and 252nd Reserve Division are carrying out operations inside the Gaza Strip. The move would add thousands of more troops to the offensive.
Israel has threatened to expand operations in the Strip as it seeks to pile pressure on Hamas to free hostages still being held in the Strip.
According to a report by Channel 12, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir was pushing to widen the military’s renewed offensive, citing Zamir as telling political officials in recent meetings that “Hamas is stalling for time, it’s a strategy, not a tactic.”
“The IDF’s operation hurts [Hamas] and causes some movement, but it doesn’t lead it to release the hostages,” Zamir reportedly said. “Therefore, there is no choice, the pressure must be increased.”
Despite the resumption of military activity in the Gaza Strip, the IDF Home Front Command on Sunday said it was further easing restrictions on civilians in southern Israel.
Following an assessment, the Home Front Command said it has adjusted the activity scale permitted in the Gaza border communities from “partial activity” to “full activity,” meaning there would be no restrictions on schools and workplaces. Over the past week, schools and workplaces were only allowed to open if an adequate bomb shelter could be reached in time.
Gatherings were still limited, however, to 2,000 people in several communities close to the Strip. Gatherings had been capped at 500 indoors and 100 outdoors over the past week.
There have been just two rocket attacks from Gaza since Israel resumed its military campaign. Hamas on Thursday launched three long-range rockets at central Israel, and on Friday it fired two rockets at the southern coastal city of Ashkelon.
New body formed to enable ‘voluntary’ departure of Gazans
On Saturday night, the security cabinet approved a suggestion by Katz to establish a new administration in the Defense Ministry tasked with enabling Palestinians to “voluntarily” leave the Gaza Strip.
In a statement Sunday morning, Katz’s office said the new directorate would work to “prepare for and enable safe and controlled passage of Gaza residents for their voluntary departure to third countries, including securing their movement, establishing movement routes, checking pedestrians at designated crossings in the Gaza Strip, as well as coordinating the provision of infrastructure that will enable passage by land, sea and air to the destination countries.”
The head of the directorate will be selected by Katz soon, his office said.
The statement added that the efforts to enable Gazans who seek to migrate from the Strip to do so are being carried out “subject to Israeli and international law, and in accordance with the vision of US President Donald Trump.”
“We are working with all means to implement the US president’s vision, and we will allow any Gaza resident who wants to move to a third state to do so,” Katz said.
The military resumed fighting in Gaza last week at the instruction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed that all negotiations for a hostage deal moving forward would be held under fire after Hamas rejected proposals to extend phase one of the previous ceasefire.
Hamas has insisted on sticking to the terms of the deal agreed to by Netanyahu in January, which required the sides to begin holding talks on phase two in early February. Israel has largely refused to do so. Hamas refused proposals to keep the ceasefire afloat by extending its first phase.
While Israel says its military campaign is necessary to pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages, the families of many of those held captive have called for a renewed ceasefire.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
On Sunday, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claimed that the death toll since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas had crossed 50,000, adding that another 113,274 have been injured since the October 7, onslaught, when Hamas-led forces invaded, killing 1,200 and abducting the hostages in an unprecedented assault that overtly targeted civilians.
The figures could not be independently verified and do not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Israel said it had killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
As reported by The Times of Israel