A man walks with salvage items near the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Asra residential compound, northwest of Nuseirat in the Gaza Strip, on March 25, 2024. (Credit: AFP)
The Israeli army confirmed on Tuesday evening that it had killed Hamas' third-in-command, Marwan Issa, in an airstrike on Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza two weeks ago, Israeli news outlet Haaretz reported.
“We have checked all the intelligence,” Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement. “Marwan Issa was eliminated in the strike we carried out around two weeks ago.”
According to the army’s announcement, its air force attacked a tunnel where Issa was staying. This is the first time in five months of its offensive on Gaza that Israel has achieved one of its stated goals of killing senior Hamas leaders in the enclave.
Marwan Abdel Karim Issa, 59, whose death was first announced last week by the White House, was the discreet deputy head of the movement's armed wing, the ruling group's number three in the enclave, and one of Israel's most wanted men after the wing’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, and commander-in-chief, Mohammad Deif.
The Wall Street Journal spoke to Tariq Kenney-Shawa, the US policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a New York-based Palestinian think tank, who told the newspaper that Issa's killing “contributes to the continuous degradation of Hamas’s capabilities as a cohesive fighting force and their ability to coordinate operations against Israeli forces in Gaza in the short-medium term,” but that it "will change little for the guerrilla resistance campaign that will be directed at occupying Israeli forces over the coming months and years."
An Isreali army spokesperson said that another member of the organization's military wing, Aazi Abu Tama'a, was also killed in the attack.
Dozens were reportedly killed by an Israeli airstrike on Nuseirat refugee camp the week following the attack that killed Issa. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the Israeli army bombed a residential building in the camp, killing dozens of displaced Palestinians sheltering there.