The Israeli military says it has killed a Hamas militant who appeared in a widely viewed video from Oct. 7, where he was seen drinking from a bottle of cola in front of two children wounded in a grenade attack that had just killed their father.
The military on Tuesday identified the militant as Ahmed Fozi Wadia, a commander in a Hamas commando battalion and a member of a paragliding unit. It said Wadia flew into the community of Netiv HaAsara on a paraglider before launching the attack on civilians there.
In a video of the attack on the Taasa family home, which was screened for journalists, diplomats and lawmakers around the world by Israeli officials, Gil Taasa is seen running to a shelter with his two boys when a grenade is thrown in. Taasa jumps on the grenade and was killed, and his sons were wounded. The militant, now identified by the military as Wadia, is then seen standing over the wounded boys and drinking cola from their fridge.
The military said aircraft struck a compound in Gaza City on Saturday where Hamas militants were operating, killing eight militants, including Wadia.
The military said the compound that was hit was near the Al-Ahli hospital but said the hospital itself was not hit. The Health Ministry in Gaza reported a strike on the hospital grounds on Saturday and said it killed three people.
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Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage in their Oct. 7 attack, which triggered the war in Gaza which is now in its 11th month and has killed more than 40,000 people, according to Gaza health officials.
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Netanyahu criticizes decision by UK government to suspend some arms exports to Israel
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday slammed a decision by the British government to suspend some arms exports to Israel over the risk that they could be used to violate international law.
In a thread on his English account on the social platform X, Netanyahu called the move “shameful” and said it would not “change Israel’s determination to defeat Hamas.”
“With or without British arms, Israel will win this war,” he wrote.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government announced the suspension Monday. The move has limited military impact but it is intended to increase pressure by Israel’s frustrated allies for an end to the war in Gaza.
The United Kingdom is among a number of Israel’s longstanding allies whose governments are under growing pressure to halt weapons exports because of the toll of the nearly 11-month-old conflict in Gaza. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians in its toll.
British firms sell a relatively small amount of weapons and components to Israel compared to major suppliers such as the U.S. and Germany. But the U.K. is one of Israel’s closest allies, so the decision carries some symbolic significance.
Israel says it closely adheres to international law in its campaign against Hamas, which launched an attack that killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage on Oct. 7 that sparked the war.
WHO says polio vaccination campaign in Gaza has reached one-quarter of children targeted in 2 days
GENEVA — The World Health Organization says a “wildly complex” polio vaccination campaign in Gaza has already reached more than one-quarter of all children targeted across the strip in the first two days of its rollout.
Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, said more than 161,000 children have been vaccinated out of the 640,000 targeted under a humanitarian pause that is “area specific” – with the first phase now underway in central Gaza.
“We surpassed the estimated target,” he told reporters at a U.N. briefing in Geneva by videoconference from Gaza. “Until now, things are going well … This is only the third day. We still have 10 days to go at least.”
Peeperkorn said more than 500 teams had fanned out across Gaza as part of the campaign against an outbreak of vaccine-derived polio in Gaza. WHO has said Israel agreed to limited pauses in the fighting to facilitate the campaign.
Lufthansa will resume flights to Tel Aviv later this week
BERLIN — German airline Lufthansa will resume flights to Tel Aviv in Israel later this week. The company announced Tuesday that it would offer flights to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport starting on Thursday.
Flights to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, will remain suspended until Sept. 30 for all airlines in the Lufthansa Group, which also includes Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings.
Flights to Amman in Jordan and Erbil in Iraq resumed on Aug. 27.
Lufthansa had canceled its connections at the beginning of last month due to rising tensions in the region.