How Hamas Is Fighting in Gaza
They hide under residential neighborhoods, storing their weapons in miles of tunnels and in houses, mosques, sofas — even a child’s bedroom — blurring the boundary between civilians and combatants.
They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits before firing on Israeli troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or firing rockets from launchers in civilian areas.
They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, sometimes luring Israeli soldiers to enter the booby-trapped buildings by scattering signs of a Hamas presence.
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Middle East Crisis: Israel Launches Major Attack That It Says Targeted a Top Hamas Commander
Here are the latest developments.
Israel launched a major strike on southern Gaza on Saturday that it said had targeted a top Hamas military commander who is considered one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to five senior Israeli officials. The Gaza authorities said that more than 70 people had been killed in the assault.
The commander targeted in the attack, Muhammed Deif, is the leader of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing. He is the second most senior Hamas figure in Gaza, after its leader in the territory, Yahya Sinwar.
Hamas issued a statement saying that Israel’s “allegations about targeting leaders are false,” and are “merely to cover up the scale of the horrific massacre.”
The strike hit a strip of coastal land, known as Mawasi, that Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone. Thousands of displaced Palestinians live there in tents, west of the city of Khan Younis, and close to the Mediterranean Sea.
Two Israeli officials said that the military had targeted Mr. Deif while he was inside a fenced Hamas-run compound that was not used as a camp for displaced people.
Two other Israeli officials said that Mr. Deif had been targeted while he was above ground, after leaving Hamas’s tunnel network under Gaza.
All five said that Mr. Deif had been with Rafah Salameh, the top Hamas commander in Khan Younis, at the time of the attack. The Israeli officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The Gazan authorities said that a second, smaller strike hit the center of Khan Younis, a nearby city.
Hiba Yazbek and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
A video captures casualties and damage from the Israeli strike on southern Gaza.
Video filmed by a witness to the Israeli strike on southern Gaza on Saturday showed fires and plumes of smoke in a tree-lined plot of land surrounding a residential building.
Filmed by Mustafa Abutaha, a professor of English, the video showed crowds of civilians gathered in and around a large crater in the ground, apparently searching for people buried in the churned earth. A man carrying a motionless child rushes past the camera.
Mr. Abutaha said in a telephone interview that the strike had hit in an area populated by hundreds of displaced people close to the Mediterranean Sea. The area is within a wider strip of coastal land, known as Mawasi, that Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone. Thousands of displaced Palestinians live there in tents.
“I saw the rockets with my eyes,” Mr. Abutaha said in a video message. “You see this — a child, a little girl,” he added, as the child was carried past. “You see the situation is very terrible.”
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Who is Muhammad Deif?
Muhammad Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’s military wing, was a mastermind of the Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and ignited the nine-month-old war in Gaza. A mysterious figure who has repeatedly escaped Israeli assassination attempts, Mr. Deif has been one of Israel’s most wanted men for decades.
He is revered within some Palestinian circles for overseeing the development of Hamas’s military capabilities and has been a symbol of the group’s resilience, finding ways to survive despite being a top target of one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East.
On Oct. 7, as Hamas launched its attack on Israeli towns and military installations, Mr. Deif released a recorded speech declaring that the group had launched its operation so “the enemy will understand that the time of their rampaging without accountability has ended.”
“Righteous fighters, this is your day to bury this criminal enemy,” he went on to say in the speech, which was broadcast on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV. “Its time has finished. Kill them wherever you find them,” he added. “Remove this filth from your land and your sacred places. Fight and the angels fight with you.”
Mr. Deif has not been seen publicly in years, and few photos of him are in the public domain. In January, the Israeli army published an image of a man it said was Mr. Deif; the picture showed him resting under a tree with a wad of cash in hand.
He is believed to be disabled, possibly missing an eye and limbs. Israel bombed his home in 2014, killing his wife and infant son.
Key Developments
Over 100 United Nations member states pledge support for UNRWA, and other news.
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The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees appears to have weathered a crisis stemming from Israeli accusations that it employed people affiliated with Hamas: On Friday, 118 United Nations member states publicly declared support for the beleaguered agency. The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said the agency, known as UNRWA, had provided indispensable aid to people in Gaza, which has been devastated by more than nine months of war. “There is no alternative to UNRWA,” he said.
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The Israeli military acknowledged wide-ranging failures that allowed Hamas-led militants to commit a massacre in the Israeli border village of Be’eri during the Oct. 7 attacks. The findings were part of a broader military inquiry into the attack that also exonerated a general who authorized a tank to fire on a house in Be’eri where Hamas fighters were holding hostages.
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Residents returning to a Gaza City neighborhood describe a swath of destruction.
Residents and rescue workers say they found dozens of bodies and most buildings reduced to ruins when they returned to the Shajaiye neighborhood in Gaza City after Israeli troops pulled out this week, having fought an intense two-week battle against Hamas militants there.
The offensive in Shajaiye was part of a wider Israeli effort to clamp down on a renewed Hamas insurgency in Gaza City, where Israel’s military has reported fierce battles with armed fighters.
Palestinians returning to Shajaiye, after heeding a call by Israel to evacuate, said the neighborhood was so devastated it was uninhabitable.
“The current situation in Shajaiye today is tragic,” said Ahmed Sidu, a photographer, who went back to his home as soon as he heard that Israeli forces had pulled out.
“There was only misery on people’s faces,” he added, referring to others who returned and found “no shelter and no water.”
Palestinian Civil Defense emergency services agency said in a statement on Thursday night that their emergency and rescue crews had recovered more than 60 bodies from Shajaiye after the Israeli military withdrawal.
The statement added that dozens of people remain missing and were feared to be buried under the rubble. The raid had destroyed most of the buildings and homes that were left standing after Israel’s initial invasion in October, it said. The death toll could not be independently confirmed.
“The Shajaiye area has become an uninhabitable area, lacking all necessities of life,” the organization said in a statement.
The Israeli military reported this week that it had concluded its operation in Shajaiye, though on Friday said it did not confirm that its troops had pulled out of the neighborhood.
The military had announced the operation in Shajaiye more than two weeks ago, along with evacuation orders that the U.N. office of humanitarian affairs said had pushed 60,000 to 80,000 people from areas east and northeast of Gaza City. It later expanded its ground operations and issued warnings to evacuate to other parts of the city.
On Friday, the military said that among the fighters killed in the operation was the deputy commander of Hamas’s Shajaiye Battalion, Ayman Showadeh. Israeli officials said Mr. Showadeh was previously “a key operative” at Hamas’s operation headquarters and was involved in directing the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that set off the war in Gaza.
Karam Hassan, a Gaza City resident who went to Shajaiye to see the aftermath of the raid, said that families who had hoped to return to their residences found themselves having to stay in shelters and displacement centers because nothing was left of their homes.
“Homes are all reduced to piles of rubble, bakeries, and shops are destroyed and even the streets have been dug up,” Mr. Hassan said. “The situation is very tough and the scale of destruction is immense.”
Mr. Sidu, the photographer, said he was among the few whose home, on the outskirts of Shajaiye, had suffered little damage, but he added he was still not sure he could stay there because all of the infrastructure had been destroyed. “How do we live without basic necessities and without water?” he said.
“There may be a relative calm now in terms of aircraft and artillery shelling,” Mr. Sidu said. “But residents were now facing “a severe shortage of potable water, internet and communications networks and were suffering emotionally.”
He said that some people whose buildings and houses were destroyed had set up tents near the rubble and were determined to stay and “create a kind of familiarity and neighborhood atmosphere that binds them together.”
Israeli forces have returned to clear out Hamas fighters in several parts of Gaza that they had previously secured, especially in the north, as Hamas has regrouped amid the anarchy of the nine-month war.
This week, the Israeli military was operating in other parts of Gaza City, including the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, where Israeli forces stormed a vacated United Nations compound, and the southern outskirts of the upscale Al-Rimal neighborhood.
Palestinian Civil Defense said on Friday that their crews began recovering bodies from Tal Al-Hawa and the Al-Sinaa neighborhoods, as they said the Israeli forces appeared to be leaving those areas as well. At least 60 corpses had been recovered, the organization said.
The Israeli military did not confirm its forces were also pulling out of those areas.
The military in a statement that Israeli forces had raided “a Hamas combat complex embedded inside a compound previously used by UNRWA,” the main United Nations agency that assists Palestinians in the area. Troops were “engaged in close-quarters combat” with militants who had “fortified themselves inside,” the statement said.
A spokeswoman for UNRWA, Juliette Touma, confirmed that the facility had been evacuated in October when the war started and that the agency had “no way to verify” the Israeli claims. The agency has “repeatedly called for independent investigations and queries into these allegations and any violation of international humanitarian law,” she said.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
Ukraine Is Targeting Crimea, a Critical Base for Russia’s Invasion
In a clear night sky above the shores of Odesa, the faint glow from missiles streaks over the Black Sea.
For much of the war, it was one-way traffic, with Russia using the occupied Crimean Peninsula first as a launchpad for its full-scale invasion and then as a staging ground for routine aerial bombardments.
Ukraine, now armed with American-made precision missiles, is for the first time capable of reaching every corner of Crimea — and the missiles are increasingly flying in both directions.
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Colombia Faces a New Problem: Too Much Cocaine
Genevieve Glatsky and Federico Rios took a plane, car, boat and motorcycle and hiked to reach Caño Cabra to talk to farmers about changes in the coca industry.
For decades, one industry has sustained the small, remote Colombian village of Caño Cabra: cocaine.
Those who live in this community in the central part of the country rise early nearly every morning to pick coca leaf, scraping brittle branches, sometimes until their hands bleed. Later, they mix the leaves with gasoline and other chemicals to make chalky white bricks of coca paste.
But two years ago, the villagers said, something alarming happened: The drug traffickers who buy the coca paste and turn it into cocaine stopped showing up. Suddenly, people who were already poor had no income. Food became scarce. An exodus to other parts of Colombia in search of jobs followed. The town of 200 people shrunk to 40.
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This Soccer Player Wanted to Wear Her Hijab on the Field. France Wouldn’t Let Her.
During Ramadan, as her family fasted and prayed, Lina Boussaha, a professional soccer player, eagerly tore open a package in her bedroom in France. Inside were two head scarves she had ordered, labeled Nike, and marketed as a symbol of empowerment for Muslim women in sports.
Ms. Boussaha, 25, turned pro when she was 17. Her parents are Algerian, she grew up in one of Paris’s poorest suburbs, and until that Ramadan, in 2022, had never worn a hijab outside prayers. She usually wore her heavy curls in a high ponytail.
But she had recently decided she wanted to wear a hijab regularly, even during games. And that decision put her on a journey that eventually took her from France to start her career anew in the Middle East.
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On the Hands of India’s Brides, Reminders of a Stark Wealth Divide
The ceremony was on the grounds of the exclusive Bangalore Club, an oasis in one of India’s largest cities. The bride-to-be, Sreya Muthukumar, was ensconced on the terrace, wreathed in smiles, greeting and chatting with her guests. Two women were attending to her, each wielding a thin plastic cone filled with henna paste.
For seven hours last Thursday, the artists drew freehand, etching patterns, motifs and mandalas on Ms. Muthukumar’s limbs. When they were done, dark green lines stretched from the tips of her fingers to above her elbows. Four other artists catered to the palms of guests. Once the henna paste, known as mehndi, dried, it was washed or scraped off to reveal the bright orange stain that has long been associated with Indian weddings — no matter how modest or lavish.
“After all those hours, when, in the end, the bride looks at her hands and says ‘I love it,’ that’s the high point for me,” said Sunitha Parihar, who adorned Ms. Muthukumar’s arms. “We mehndi artists are so important to make the bride look and feel beautiful on her big day.”
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Rescued Hostage Describes Months of Uncertainty and Terror in Gaza
Idling away the hours in a darkened room in Gaza with two other hostages, Andrey Kozlov sometimes heard one of his captors on the other side of the door typing away on a laptop.
The man was a constant presence in the apartment, while other guards worked shifts and went out to the market, Mr. Kozlov said in an interview, from a hotel room in a Tel Aviv suburb a month after his rescue from captivity.
The guards were unmasked, but they were careful not to reveal their names, telling the hostages to call them all Muhammad.
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