The notorious spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing in the Gaza Strip was said to have been the target of an Israeli airstrike on Saturday, the results of which were not immediately clear but which left Israeli officials feeling cautiously optimistic.

The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet said in a statement on Saturday evening that they had carried out an airstrike on a senior Hamas operative in the Gaza City area, in the northern Gaza Strip.

While the statement did not provide the identity of the targeted terror operative, multiple Hebrew media outlets reported that it was the longtime Hamas spokesman, Hudayfa Samir Abdallah al-Kahlout, more widely known by his nom de guerre Abu Obeida.

Abu Obeida is always masked in his statements to the media, and he is viewed as something of a symbol in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in the Arab world. During the current war, the IDF published an estimation of what his face looks like.

While his fate was not immediately known, unnamed Israeli security sources cited by Hebrew media expressed cautious optimism about the outcome of the strike.

“There is optimism, we have cautiously assessed........

© The Times of Israel