GAZA CITY: Israel said on Saturday (Oct 3) that it attempted to kill Hamas's top leader in the Gaza Strip in an airstrike on an apartment that local officials said killed five people, four of them women.

The pre-dawn strike came on the anniversary according to the Jewish calendar of the Oct 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest-ever day for Israel which retaliated with a devastating offensive in Gaza.

The Israeli military said it aimed to kill Ali al-Amoudi, describing him as the "right-hand man" of slain Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar and saying he was involved in planning the Oct 7 attack.

Israel said it was reviewing whether it killed or injured him.

It said it targeted him after learning that he was inside an apartment building, saying it showed that Hamas was using civilians as human shields.

"Today, al-Amoudi is the most senior Hamas figure in the Gaza Strip and is directly involved in Hamas's terror activities and in rebuilding the organisation for war. The terrorist was struck in order to remove the threat," a military statement said.

"Steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions," the military said, adding it "regrets any harm caused to uninvolved individuals".

Israel killed Sinwar in Gaza in October 2024, in what many Israelis saw as a major symbolic victory, although Israel has vowed to keep destroying Hamas even since a US-brokered ceasefire was declared a year ago.

Amoudi is considered Hamas' top person in the Gaza Strip. The movement's leader Khalil al-Hayaa lives in Qatar and has tried to manoeuvre diplomatically to Hamas' advantage.

Hayaa agreed in July to a US plan for Hamas to give up its weapons, in what President Donald Trump hailed as a breakthrough but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed as insincere.

FIVE DEAD INCLUDE 2 WOMEN AND THEIR DAUGHTERS

An official at Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital told AFP it received at dawn the bodies of five people and a number of injured following an airstrike in the Rimal neighbourhood.

It said the dead were two women and their daughters, as well as a man.

Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesman for the civil defence agency which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, said two missiles directly hit the apartment, causing a fire and damaging the building.

Two of the five victims were Christians, the hospital director said.

Mourners gathered later on Saturday at ...