Gaza Hamas leader targeted in deadly strike, Israel says

Israel said it tried to kill Ali al-Amoudi, whom its military described as Hamas's most senior figure in the Gaza Strip, in a pre-dawn strike on an apartment in Gaza City on Saturday that local officials said killed five people.

The Israeli military said al-Amoudi was the right-hand man of slain Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar and was involved in planning the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. It said it was checking whether al-Amoudi had been killed or injured.

The military said it targeted him after learning he was inside an apartment building, and accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields. It said it used precise munitions and took steps to reduce harm to civilians, adding that it regretted harm to uninvolved people.

An official at Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital said the hospital received the bodies of five people after the strike in the Rimal neighbourhood: two women, their daughters and a man. The official said several people were also injured.

Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency operating under Hamas authority, said two missiles directly hit the apartment, causing a fire and damaging the building.

The hospital director said two of the dead were Christians. Mourners later gathered at the Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City for the funeral of two women identified as 56-year-old Maysaa Abu Daoud and her 36-year-old daughter Mary Al-Najjar.

The strike came on the anniversary, according to the Jewish calendar, of the Hamas-led October 7 attack. That attack killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Israel's subsequent offensive has killed more than 74,200 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures the United Nations considers reliable.