An Israeli airstrike targeted an apartment building housing displaced Palestinians in central Gaza City on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 20 others, a medical source at Al-Shifa Hospital told Al Manassa.
The attack, which involved at least one missile, struck an old, formerly abandoned building on Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, just east of the Rimal neighborhood. Eyewitnesses reported that the area was heavily crowded with civilians marking the first day of the Eid holiday when the bombardment occurred.
Displaced families had been using the structure as a makeshift refuge for months after their original homes in eastern and northern Gaza were destroyed.
“We came here and thought an old building was better than tents,” one displaced resident told Al Manassa. “We are all displaced civilian families. Suddenly, on the evening of the first day of Eid, just as we were trying to celebrate and bring a little joy to our children, the army targeted the building without any warning. The place was reduced to rubble, and a fire broke out.”
The explosion sent shrapnel ripping through tightly packed tents set up around the perimeter of the building, an eye-witness explained to Al Manassa. The scene shifted instantly “from the joy of Eid and the quiet of night to rubble, body parts, and smoke everywhere,” the witness added.
While civilians bore the brunt of the blast, Israeli media outlet Kann reported that the military operation specifically targeted Ezzedine Beik, commander of the Northern Gaza Brigade, and Emad Aslim, deputy commander of the Gaza City Brigade.
Two of Aslim’s relatives confirmed to Al Manassa that the strike killed Emad Aslim, who served as the commander of the Zeitoun Battalion and was the official responsible for expansion and armament within the Al-Qassam Brigades’ Gaza Brigade. His funeral is scheduled to take place at noon on May 28 in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.
At the time of publication, the success or failure of the assassination attempt against the second commander, Ezzedine Beik, remained unconfirmed.
Aslim’s prominence had risen significantly during the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, particularly during repeated Israeli incursions into the Zeitoun neighborhood, an area subjected to wide-scale destruction over the past two and a half years.
Following the strike, Hamas released a statement on its Telegram account condemning the continuation of Israeli airstrikes. The group accused the Israeli occupation army of committing crimes against civilians and violating the ceasefire agreement.
They added that the intensification of Israeli strikes over the past 48 hours, which have killed more than 20 people, reflects the occupation’s drive to return to escalating the aggression and continue the genocidal attacks, without abiding by the guarantees and understandings agreed in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2025.
Hamas called on the US administration and the international guarantors of the ceasefire agreement to intervene immediately, condemn the Israeli violations, and take binding steps to force Israel to implement the agreement’s obligations. The movement warned that the agreement now faces the risk of total collapse as a result of ongoing crimes and violations.
The strike is part of an accelerating Israeli campaign targeting top figures within Hamas’ military wing. Just one day prior, on the evening of May 26, the Israeli army announced the assassination of Al-Qassam Brigades Chief of Staff Mohammed Odeh. Odeh had been in the post for less than a week, having succeeded Ezzedine Al-Haddad, who was himself assassinated during the first week of May 2026.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz have repeatedly claimed that Hamas’s military leadership remains the primary obstacle to enforcing the “disarming of Gaza”—a condition Israel insists must be met before transitioning to the second phase of the ceasefire agreement.
This second phase was designed to establish governance arrangements for the Gaza Strip and determine the future of Hamas’s weaponry, adhering to the framework announced by US President Donald Trump on October 14, 2025.
Netanyahu and Katz have threatened in several previous statements to pursue and assassinate leaders of the Palestinian resistance, foremost among them the leaders of Al-Qassam Brigades, to force the movement to disarm and hand over its weapons, while threatening to continue military operations to achieve their goals.
Both Netanyahu and Katz have issued numerous threats that they will continue to pursue and assassinate Palestinian resistance leaders, particularly those within the Al-Qassam Brigades, to compel the movement to surrender its arms, while threatening sustained military operations anyway.
