The airstrikes also destroyed dozens of booby-trapped buildings, causing huge explosions heard as far south as Sderot and the plains region, as hidden IEDs detonated in secondary blasts as well.
By Batya Jerenberg
The IDF eliminated on Sunday the commander of the Beit Hanoun brigade, who had been directing the attacks against the Israeli forces fighting Hamas in the northern Gazan city during the current offensive.
This includes the ambush two weeks ago in which five IDF soldiers from the Netzach Yehuda Battalion were killed.
Hussein Fayyad, also known as Hussein Fiatsch, had reportedly been hiding in recent months in Beit Hanoun’s extensive underground network as he commanded his steadily decreasing number of men.
Israeli jets bombed several tunnels throughout the night as they demolished terrorist infrastructure in the city, killing him.
The airstrikes also destroyed dozens of booby-trapped buildings, causing huge explosions heard as far south as Sderot and the plains region, as hidden IEDs detonated in secondary blasts as well.
Nir, a resident of Sderot, told N12, “I was sleeping, and when I heard the explosion, it felt like it was inside the house. I went out of the bedroom into the living room and saw that the window had shattered. It was an explosion we had never felt before — stronger than Qassams [rockets] that had fallen in the neighborhood in the past.”
Fayyad was no newcomer to Hamas ranks, having directed mortar, rocket and anti-tank missile launches at Israeli border communities for years before the current hostilities, as well as over the course of this war.
The IDF announced in May 2024 that it had succeeded in assassinating him in a tunnel in Jabalya that had been attacked in a coordinated effort by fighters from the 98th Division combat teams, special forces from the Air Force and the elite Yahalom unit.
However, just a day earlier, Al Jazeera had published a video purportedly showing him watching cameras in a tunnel in Beit Hanoun while directing an attack on IDF forces.
Fayyad then put any rumors to rest by appearing in public at a funeral, during the most recent cease-fire in the Strip early this year.
Hamas mocked Israel at the time, calling his survival “an unexpected surprise and a painful blow to the enemy’s intelligence services” in a statement on Telegram, and adding, “In war, if the strong did not win, then they were defeated, and if the weak did not lose, then they won.”
