Hamas commander Walid Majdi Haniyeh dies of wounds after targeted strike in Gaza

Palestinian sources said Friday that Walid Majdi Haniyeh, the nephew of slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, died of wounds from an Israeli Air Force strike. He was reportedly hit in a precise attack in the al-Nasr neighborhood in western Gaza City.

The sources said Haniyeh served as a senior commander in Hamas’s Nukhba units. He was known by the nickname “al-Lobi,” a label that may point to past activity in Libya. In the strike, he lost an arm and suffered severe head bleeding before later dying.

The article also recalled that his uncle, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in July 2024 in a room inside a secure compound in central Tehran. According to foreign reports, an explosive device had been planted in the room and detonated, killing the Hamas leader. Months earlier, three of Ismail Haniyeh’s sons and three grandchildren were killed in a strike at the Shati camp in northern Gaza, with the sons described as senior Hamas operatives.

The nickname “al-Lobi” is also tied, the report said, to possible earlier activity in Libya. In 2019, a Libyan court sentenced four Hamas engineers to long prison terms for collecting weapons there, and they were released in December 2023 after Turkish pressure. The killing is part of a series of recent targeted Israeli strikes in Gaza, and the report said more than 10 militants were killed over the past week as Israel continued operations to remove threats to its forces and civilians.