Israel announced on Wednesday it had killed Mohammed Odeh, the newly appointed head of Hamas’s armed wing in Gaza, marking the latest casualty in a sustained campaign targeting the militant group’s leadership since the October 2023 attacks.
A Hamas source confirmed to AFP that Odeh’s funeral had begun in Gaza. The group never officially announced his appointment as head of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military branch.
Odeh’s death continues Israel’s systematic elimination of senior Hamas figures, both political leaders and military commanders, across Gaza and the wider region since the 7 October 2023 assault that triggered the ongoing conflict.
His predecessor, Ezzedine al-Haddad, was killed just 11 days earlier on 16 May. Israel described him as a key architect of the October 2023 attack, which remains the deadliest assault in Israeli history. Two Hamas officials confirmed his death in an Israeli airstrike.
The Israeli military’s targeted killings have decimated Hamas’s upper echelons over the past two and a half years.
On 17 October 2024, Israeli forces announced they had killed Yahya Sinwar during an operation in southern Gaza. Israel accused Sinwar of masterminding the October 2023 attack that sparked the war.
Three months earlier, on 31 July 2024, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a blast in Tehran, where he was attending the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he died from a “short-range projectile” launched from outside his accommodation. Israel initially declined to comment, maintaining its policy of silence on foreign operations, but Defence Minister Yoav Gallant acknowledged responsibility in December 2024. Sinwar replaced Haniyeh as overall leader on 6 August.
Two weeks before Haniyeh’s death, Israel announced it had killed Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif in southern Gaza on 13 July 2024. Hamas only acknowledged his death six months later in January 2025.
Earlier in the conflict, on 2 January 2024, Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri was killed in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, an attack blamed on Israel.
The targeted assassinations stretch back decades. On 17 April 2004, Hamas co-founder and leader Abdelaziz Rantissi was killed in a helicopter strike on his car in Gaza City, weeks after his predecessor’s death.
Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed on 22 March 2004, along with seven others, in a helicopter strike as they left dawn prayers at a Gaza City mosque. The wheelchair-bound cleric, recognisable by his thick white beard and Islamic white robe, had been released from Israeli prison in 1997 in a swap following the attempted poisoning of Khaled Meshaal, a founding Hamas leader, by Israeli intelligence agents in Amman.
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