Ismail Barhoum, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, was killed on Sunday evening in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel said it had targeted and killed Barhoum at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, referring to him as a “key Hamas terrorist,” as the Palestinian terror group confirmed his death and said he had been undergoing treatment after being injured in a previous strike.
Defense Minister Israel Katz in a statement hailed the killing of Barhoum, saying he was “the new Hamas prime minister in Gaza, who replaced Issam Da’alis, the previous prime minister who was eliminated a few days ago.”
The Israel Defense Forces said the strike was carried out following “an extensive intelligence-gathering process,” and that a “precision munition” was used to mitigate harm to civilians.
Footage from the scene showed that the hospital building was largely undamaged in the strike, except for fire blazing in one section off a stairwell.
The attack killed at least five people, according to Palestinian medics, and footage on social media appeared to show people extricating bodies and injured people from the rubble.
“The Hamas organization exploits civilian infrastructure while brutally endangering the Gazan population. The cynical use of an active hospital as a shelter for the planning and executing of murderous terrorist attacks is in direct violation of international law,” the IDF statement read.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at the hospital, and a Hamas source told AFP that “Barhoum was receiving treatment after sustaining critical injuries in an airstrike targeting his home in Khan Younis at dawn last Tuesday.”
The strike on the hospital that killed Barhoum was caught on camera by both Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic.
He was at least the fourth member of Hamas’s political bureau killed since last Tuesday, when Israel resumed airstrikes in the territory after an impasse over continuing a ceasefire. Earlier Sunday, an Israeli airstrike near Khan Younis killed Salah al-Bardawil, another senior member of its political bureau.
Barhoum was a member of Hamas’s political wing and had been involved in financial activities for the terror group, according to the European Union, which placed sanctions on him last year. He was also reported to have dealt with Hamas’s finances.
Out of the 20 members of Hamas’s political bureau elected in 2021, 11 have been assassinated during the war in Gaza. Seven are either certain or highly likely to be outside the Gaza Strip.
In a separate announcement on Sunday, the IDF and Shin Bet security agency said two senior Hamas military wing commanders had been killed in recent airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.