An Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza has killed senior Hamas political leader Salah al-Bardaweel, according to a Hamas official. Local sources say the strike also killed Bardaweel’s wife. Israeli authorities have not yet commented.
According to Hamas-run health officials, the death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 50,000 since the war began, with at least 30 people killed in Khan Younis and Rafah on Sunday alone. Israel resumed heavy airstrikes earlier this week, effectively ending a nearly two-month ceasefire. It accused Hamas of rejecting a U.S.-backed proposal to extend the truce, while Hamas claimed Israel had abandoned the original agreement, which included an Israeli military withdrawal, hostage and prisoner exchanges, and negotiations for Gaza’s reconstruction.
Hamas stated that Bardaweel, 66, was praying with his wife when an Israeli missile struck their tent. A father of eight, he was one of Hamas’s most senior political figures, closely associated with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. He led Hamas’s parliamentary bloc and was re-elected to its political bureau in 2021. Following the reported deaths of Sinwar and Rawhi Mushtaha, Bardaweel was considered Hamas’s highest-ranking political leader.
The strike that killed him was part of a wave of intense Israeli bombardment in southern Gaza after the ceasefire’s collapse last Tuesday. Meanwhile, a Palestinian Red Crescent spokesperson told the BBC that Israeli forces had surrounded several ambulances attempting to reach victims of an airstrike in Rafah. He reported that several paramedics were wounded, and one team had been trapped for hours with no communication.
The Israeli military has issued evacuation orders for the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in western Rafah, where heavy shelling and a limited ground assault have been reported. Residents described intense gunfire saying: “Bullets are raining down on us. A woman was shot and is bleeding, but ambulances can’t reach her.”
Israel launched its military operation in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, cross-border attack, which killed approximately 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages. Since then, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry reports that over 49,500 Palestinians have been killed, with widespread destruction across the region.
