A Hamas terrorist who invaded Israel during the October 7, 2023, onslaught, the nephew of former Hamas politburo leader Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, the military announced Saturday.

The strike killed Walid Haniyeh, the deputy commander of an elite Nukhba Force company in Hamas’s military wing.

The IDF said Haniyeh commanded terrorist infiltrators on October 7 and, as such, “was involved in directing and providing operational instructions to a terrorist cell as they took Israeli civilians hostage into the Gaza Strip.”

Recently, he worked to recruit new Hamas operatives while commanding military training for Nukhba terrorists, the IDF added.

The IDF has for more than two and a half years sought out and targeted terrorists involved in the October 7 attack, which killed 1,200 people, saw 251 people taken hostage and launched the Gaza war.

Haniyeh’s uncle, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed by Israel in a 2024 assassination in Tehran. He was killed hours after attending a swearing-in ceremony for Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. While reports after the assassination said he was killed by a bomb planted in his guesthouse, Iran said the following year that he was killed by a precision missile that tracked him via his cellphone.

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