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On September 29-30, 2024, several Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups announced the deaths of senior commanders due to Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon. This comes as Israel has carried out multiple strikes in the country, mostly targeting operatives of Lebanese Hizbullah, including dozens of senior leaders and commanders, such as the group's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
Al-Jama'ah Al-Islamiyah Eulogizes Slain Commander And Operative
On September 29, Lebanon's Muslim Brotherhood-linked Al-Jama'ah Al-Islamiyah announced that a commander and an operative had been killed "on the road to liberating the land and Jerusalem and on the path of jihad and resistance."
Hamas Announces Killing Of Chief Commander In Lebanon, Who Also Ran UNRWA School For Palestinian Refugees
On September 30, Hamas issued a statement announcing that early that morning, the group's chief commander in Lebanon and a member of its leadership abroad had become a "martyr on the road to Jerusalem, in the shadows of the Al-Aqsa Flood epic battle," along with his "jihad-waging wife," his son, and daughter. The four were killed in a "terrorist, criminal assassination operation" which targeted their home in a refugee camp in a Lebanese city.
Declaring that the man had led a "career full of action in service of our Palestinian people, its legitimate struggle, and just cause," the statement noted that he had been a "successful teacher and excellent headmaster," as the school he ran "graduated generations of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon." Addressing the slain commander, Hamas wrote: "Despite your engrossment in building an educated Palestinian generation … that did not stop you from building a generation that carries its just cause in its heart and on its shoulders … in a career of building and liberation."
The beginning of the Hamas statement
The statement asserts that the man had offered himself and his family as a "sacrifice for the mother of all causes, the most just and holiest," and describes their deaths as "a blessed end for your long jihadi career." Asking Allah to accept him as a martyr, Hamas vowed to "the martyr and all pure martyrs of our nation to continue on their path and carry on their journey, until the occupation is driven away from our blessed land, and Jerusalem … and the prisoners are liberated."
For years, the man had served as the principal of a secondary school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in a refugee camp, and was also chairman of UNRWA's Teachers' Association in Lebanon. In March 2024, UNRWA suspended him from his position for "violation of agency protocols" after he praised Hamas' October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel. It is noteworthy that in November 2018, his school won the International School Award from the British Council in Lebanon, and a few days later two students won a literary competition organized by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
The man with a group of students at the secondary school
A Facebook post by the man, featuring the UNRWA logo, noting his school's accomplishments
PFLP Announces Deaths Of Three Operatives, Including Chief Military Commander In Lebanon
On September 30, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) announced that two commanders along with a fighter had been killed by "Zionist missiles of treachery in a treacherous targeting" in a Lebanese city. The first was a member of the PFLP's political bureau and in charge of its military security department, and the second a member of its general central committee and military department, also serving as the chief PFLP military commander in Lebanon. According to the PFLP, the two were killed while fulfilling "their duty of struggle and combat … to defend Lebanon and Palestine and assist the crushed, in the face of continued Zionist aggression against our nation."
Declaring that the "martyrs" sacrificed their lives "in confrontation with the forces of arrogance and global imperialism, led by the head of terror, the United States," the group vowed to avenge their deaths and continue on their path "until uprooting this brutal enemy [i.e. Israel] from our land, leading to freedom, independence, and complete liberation."
Since the beginning of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, operatives of several Palestinian groups, including Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon while fighting Israel.
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