The top commanders of Hamas are mostly dead. The group’s rank and file has been decimated. Many of its hide-outs and stockpiles have been captured and destroyed.

But Hamas’s killing of an Israeli colonel in northern Gaza on Sunday underscored how the group’s military wing, though unable to operate as a conventional army, is still a potent guerrilla force with enough fighters and munitions to enmesh the Israeli military in a slow, grinding and as yet unwinnable war.

Col. Ehsan Daksa, a member of Israel’s Arab Druse minority, was killed when a planted explosive blew up near his tank convoy. It was a surprise attack that exemplified how Hamas has held out for nearly a year since Israel invaded Gaza late last October, and will likely be able to even after the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, last week.

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ROME — The Vatican said on Thursday that it had extended an agreement with Beijing over the appointment of bishops in China, weeks after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to the Vatican on an unsuccessful mission to kill it.

The announcement renewed for another two years a historic agreement struck in 2018 that ended a decades-old power struggle over the right to appoint bishops in China, despite concerns over religious liberty and human rights in the country.

The deal calls for China to formally recognize the pope’s authority within the Roman Catholic Church and his final say over the country’s bishops. The Vatican in turn recognized the legitimacy of bishops previously appointed by the Chinese government and excommunicated by the church.

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