Israeli military officials announced that an airstrike in Gaza City on Wednesday killed a senior Hamas terrorist accused of murdering captive soldier Noa Marciano hy”d, when she was being held hostage in late 2023.

The strike, carried out in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, killed Muhammad Issam Hassan al-Habil, a Hamas cell commander whom Israeli authorities say was directly involved in Marciano’s killing. The operation followed an overnight attack in northern Gaza in which Palestinian gunmen seriously wounded an Israeli reservist officer.

IDF officials said the strike was conducted using intelligence gathered by the Gaza Division, where Marciano had served as a surveillance soldier in the 414th Combat Intelligence Collection Unit before she was abducted.

According to the Shin Bet, interrogations of captured suspects revealed that al-Habil had “brutally murdered” Marciano while she was being held in Gaza. Israeli officials said the killing took place after she was wounded in an Israeli airstrike and taken to Shifa Hospital.

Marciano, 19, was kidnapped from the Nachal Oz military base during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel. The military recovered her body in November 2023, more than a month after her abduction, and she was buried in her hometown of Modi’in.

In the weeks following her capture, Hamas released a propaganda video showing Marciano speaking to the camera and identifying her family and hometown. The footage then cut to images of her body, drawing international condemnation.

At the time, then-IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said intelligence and forensic evidence showed that Marciano had survived an Israeli strike and was later killed inside Shifa Hospital, contradicting Hamas’s claims that she died from Israeli bombing.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)