Jerusalem, June 20 (IANS) The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Friday that it had killed a senior commander of the Palestinian militant group Mujahideen Brigades in central Gaza.
The IDF added that the commander, Ali Saadi Wasfi al-Agha, served as the military commander of the group’s southern Gaza brigades, and was slated to replace the head of the group, Assad Abu Sharia, who was killed by the IDF and Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency earlier this month.
The Israeli army added that al-Agha was responsible for the burial in Khan Younis of the kidnapped Israeli couple Gadi Haggai and Judih Weinstein, whose bodies were recently recovered from Gaza by Israeli forces.
Al-Agha also orchestrated attacks against Israelis both in Israel and the Gaza Strip, recruiting operatives for that purpose, the IDF claimed, Xinhua news agency reported. According to the statement, he was killed on Monday in a joint operation by the IDF and Israel’s Shin Bet, while he was in a hideout in central Gaza.
The IDF said that over the past week, it had carried out more than 300 strikes in the Gaza Strip. The targets included militants, military buildings, weapons depots, anti-tank and sniper positions.
Meanwhile, a fighter from the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed on Friday morning in an Israeli airstrike that targetted a vehicle in southwestern Lebanon, according to Lebanese state media and a security source.
“A hostile drone targetted a vehicle on the Abbasiya road at the town’s forest junction,” resulting in one fatality, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported, adding that ambulances have rushed to the scene.
A Lebanese security source told Xinhua that the victim was a Hezbollah militant named Mohammad Khader Al-Husseini, from the town of Jannata in the Tyre District.
“Another Hezbollah militant, named Ahmad Ghazi Ali from the village Houla, was killed Thursday afternoon in an Israeli drone strike on Houla in southeastern Lebanon,” the source added.
These developments come despite a ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel, brokered by the United States and France on November 27, 2024, which ended over a year of hostilities sparked by the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip.
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