IDF kills Hamas leader who was part of October attack

Israel’s military has said it has killed a Hamas commander who killed a father in front of his two children in the 7 October attack and then was filmed drinking a can of Coca-Cola from the fridge.

- ANDY GREGORY

As prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces angry street protests and demands to sign a truce in Gaza to retrieve the remaining hostages seized during Hamas’s bloody attack, the Israeli military claimed to have killed eight Hamas members in an airstrike. The Israeli military identified the battalion commander as Ahmed Fozi Nazer Wadia, who it claimed flew into the Israeli settlement of Netiv HaAsara on a hang glider on 7 October before attacking civilians there.

In footage of the attack – which triggered Israel’s war in Gaza – screened privately for journalists and officials by Israel, resident Gil Taasa was reported to have thrown himself onto a grenade to protect his two sons as they all ran to a shelter in the attack.