Newsletters
Hamas confirmed Sunday the death of senior commander Raed Saad, a senior leader in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City despite a cease-fire agreement.
Four Palestinians were killed Saturday in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a vehicle in western Gaza City, an attack the Israeli army said was aimed at Saad.
In a televised speech, Hamas’ chief in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, confirmed that Saad lost his life in the Israeli attack.
Saad had survived several Israeli assassination attempts before he was killed in the strike, which came despite a cease-fire that took effect in Gaza on Oct. 10.
The occupation claimed that Saad’s killing was in response to an alleged violation of the cease-fire agreement, citing the earlier detonation of an explosive device against an Israeli army force inside Gaza.
However, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the assassination was carried out after “favorable circumstances were exploited,” with no connection to any breach of the truce.
The Israeli army codenamed the operation “Fast Food,” saying it seized the opportunity to kill what it described as the current second-in-command of Hamas’ military wing, after Ezzedine al-Haddad, who leads the Qassam Brigades.
With the killing of Raed Saad, Israel claims it has succeeded in reaching him after over 35 years of pursuit, during which he survived numerous assassination attempts.
Raed Hussein Saad was born on Aug. 15, 1972, in the Beach refugee camp west of Gaza City. He joined Hamas at an early age, and the Israeli occupation began pursuing him at the outset of the First Intifada in 1987. He was arrested by Israeli forces on several occasions.
While in prison in 1993, Saad earned a bachelor’s degree in Sharia from the Islamic University of Gaza. During that period, he was active in the Islamic Bloc, Hamas’ student wing.
He later obtained a master’s degree in Sharia from the same university in 2008.
According to exclusive information obtained by Al Jazeera, Saad joined military work early on and operated alongside veteran Qassam Brigades fugitives such as Saad al-Arabid. He is considered among the last generation of fugitives from the period of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which erupted in 2000.
In 2007, Saad assumed command of the Northern Gaza Brigade within the Qassam Brigades and was among those who oversaw the establishment and training of the group’s naval force in Gaza.
In 2015, he headed the operations division and was a member of a small military council composed of the Qassam Brigades’ leadership in the Gaza Strip, alongside Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa, during the period from 2012 to 2021.
Israel says Saad was responsible for the war’s operational planning, overseeing two strategic steps that formed the basis of the executive preparations for the Al-Aqsa Flood operation: the establishment of elite units and the preparation of the “Jericho Wall” plan, aimed at decisively defeating the Gaza Division of the Israeli army.
Saad was also subjected to several assassination attempts during the war, the most prominent of which occurred in May 2024, when a residential area in the Beach refugee camp was bombed.
After a failed attempt to kill him, the Israeli army offered a reward of $800,000 for information leading to his whereabouts.
Army Radio reported that Israel had searched for Raed Saad for a very long time and attempted to assassinate him twice over the past two weeks, but without success. Once he was identified Saturday evening while riding in a vehicle accompanied by his personal guards, the airstrike was carried out immediately.
The Israeli army has repeatedly violated the cease-fire, killing at least 391 Palestinians and injuring 1,063 others since the deal.
Israel has killed over 70,600 people, mostly women and children, and injured more than 171,100 others in attacks on Gaza since October 2023, which have continued despite the truce.
2 min read
