The Israel Defense Forces announced Sunday that a top commander in Hamas’s naval police and a terrorist who personally invaded Israel during the October 7, 2023 massacre were among four operatives killed in a series of precision strikes across the Gaza Strip. According to The Times of Israel, the operations reflect Israel’s continued and methodical campaign to dismantle the command structure that planned and executed the worst single-day atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust, even as a fragile ceasefire technically remains in place.
The most senior figure eliminated was Mansour Sami Mahmoud Shahtout, the commander of Hamas’s naval police in the Central Camps region of Gaza. A strike on Friday targeted Shahtout while he was traveling in a vehicle, and two additional naval police commanders riding with him were killed in the same operation. The IDF identified the precision of the strike as a deliberate choice, noting that all three men were armed and actively moving through an area where Israeli troops were operating. For a military that has invested enormous resources in minimizing unintended harm while maximizing the removal of legitimate combatant targets, the operation stands as a textbook example of the doctrine Israel has refined over more than two and a half years of war.
Why the Naval Police Matter
To outside observers, the phrase “naval police” might suggest a benign coast guard function, but the IDF was explicit in dismantling that misconception. The naval police, the military said, operates directly under Hamas’s military wing and is tasked with advancing and directing terror attacks against IDF troops and against the State of Israel itself. This is not a civilian maritime authority. It is an armed arm of a designated terrorist organization, and Shahtout in particular had recently worked to advance fresh attacks on Israeli forces.
That distinction matters enormously for understanding the legitimacy of the strike. Hamas has long exploited the language of governance to disguise its military infrastructure, embedding fighters within institutions that carry administrative names while functioning as operational nodes of a terror army. By targeting the leadership of the naval police, Israel is degrading a unit specifically organized to kill Israeli soldiers, not interfering with any legitimate civil service. The IDF emphasized that the three operatives “were traveling in a vehicle while armed with weapons, and as such posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip,” language that underscores both the immediacy of the threat and the care taken to act against combatants rather than bystanders.
Bringing October 7 Perpetrators to Account
The second strike disclosed Sunday carried profound symbolic and moral weight. On Wednesday, in Gaza City’s Shati Camp, the IDF killed Abd al-Rahman Maher Abd al-Karim Ziyada, whom the military identified as a commander of a Nukhba Force cell within Hamas’s military wing. The Nukhba, the elite shock units that spearheaded the October 7 invasion, are the men who poured across the border to murder, rape, mutilate, and abduct Israeli civilians in their homes and at a music festival.
Ziyada was not a peripheral figure. The IDF said he infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7 massacre and looted an IDF vehicle, driving it back into the Gaza Strip. He was also photographed celebrating on October 7 next to a captured Israeli tank, the very tank from which Israeli soldiers were abducted. The military released the image alongside its announcement, a stark visual record of a man documenting his own participation in one of the darkest days in Israeli history. That photograph, once a trophy of terror, is now part of the evidentiary record of a perpetrator who has been held to account.
For Israelis who have spent more than two and a half years insisting that every architect and foot soldier of that day be pursued, the elimination of an October 7 invader who was literally pictured beside an abducted crew’s tank is more than a tactical success. It is a fulfillment of a national promise. The structural pursuit of these figures mirrors the campaign that recently culminated in the elimination of Hamas Gaza chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the last of the senior planners of the massacre still operating inside the Strip.
A Tunnel Expert and a Haniyeh Relative
The Sunday announcement extended beyond those two operations. A separate strike on Wednesday in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis killed Kamal Muhammad Hamdan Najar, who the IDF identified as the head of the tunnel unit in the Khan Younis area. Hamas’s subterranean network has been central to its ability to wage war, conceal hostages, store weapons, and move fighters undetected. Removing a tunnel expert with detailed knowledge of that infrastructure compounds the operational damage Israel has inflicted on the group’s underground capabilities. The military said that throughout the war and recently, the targeted operatives had tried to advance attacks on Israeli troops, and that they therefore posed an immediate threat and were eliminated in precise strikes.
The updates followed a separate disclosure on Saturday, when the IDF announced that Walid Haniyeh, the nephew of former Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, had been killed in a Thursday strike. According to the military, Walid Haniyeh served as the deputy commander of an elite Nukhba Force company and also invaded Israel on October 7. The pattern across these announcements is unmistakable. Israel is systematically working its way through the rosters of the units that carried out the massacre, from senior planners down to company-level commanders, ensuring that the leadership cadre responsible for October 7 is steadily and permanently dismantled.
The Ceasefire and the Logic of Sustained Pressure
These strikes are occurring against the backdrop of an October 2025 ceasefire, and Israel has been clear about why operations continue despite that agreement. The IDF says it carries out strikes in response to violations of the truce and to neutralize Hamas operatives who continue to plan and direct attacks on Israeli forces. A ceasefire is not a shield behind which a terror army can quietly rearm and reconstitute its command structure. Israel’s position, consistent throughout the conflict, is that meaningful security can only be sustained by maintaining the capability and the will to act against emerging threats the moment they materialize.
Gaza is currently split between Israeli and Hamas-controlled areas, and the durability of any arrangement depends on Hamas’s eventual disarmament. The enforcement of Israel’s maritime blockade, a legal instrument upheld under international law and tested repeatedly by activist flotillas, is part of the same strategic picture, as detailed in coverage of the 2026 flotilla interception. The naval police that Shahtout commanded existed precisely to challenge that maritime security architecture and to threaten Israeli forces along the coast, which makes his removal directly relevant to the integrity of the blockade.
Notably, even inside Gaza, the appetite for continued Hamas rule appears to be fraying. On Friday, hundreds of Gazans gathered to protest Hamas despite explicit threats from the terror group, a development that aligns with arguments advanced by Gazan voices such as those documented in the analysis of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib’s case that the territory needs to be freed from Hamas control. Each senior commander Israel removes weakens the apparatus of intimidation that Hamas uses to suppress that internal dissent.
The Broader Strategic Picture
The October 7 attack killed roughly 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, launching a war that reshaped the security landscape of the entire region. The IDF has for more than two and a half years sought out and targeted the terrorists involved in that attack, and the Sunday announcement demonstrates that the effort has not slowed even within the framework of a ceasefire. The professionalism of the IDF’s targeting process, and the way the military communicates the identity and culpability of each operative it eliminates, reflects an institution committed to lawful, evidence-based warfare against an enemy that hides among civilians and weaponizes its own population.
Critics who reflexively frame every Israeli strike as escalation often ignore the specific identities of those targeted. These were not random casualties. They were a naval police commander organizing attacks on soldiers, an October 7 invader who looted an Israeli vehicle and posed beside an abducted crew’s tank, a tunnel chief who helped build the infrastructure of terror, and the deputy commander of a Nukhba company that breached the border to murder civilians. Holding such men accountable is not a deviation from the pursuit of peace. It is a precondition for it.
For Israel, the message of these operations is consistent and clear. The promise made to the victims of October 7, that those responsible would be found and brought to justice, remains in force. The IDF’s spokesperson apparatus has been central to communicating that resolve to both domestic and international audiences, a role explored in depth in coverage of the IDF Spokesperson Unit. As long as Hamas operatives continue to plot against Israeli forces, Israel has signaled that it will continue to act, precisely, lawfully, and without apology.
