“We will not stop until the hostages are returned and Hamas is eradicated,” army chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said.

(JNS)

The Israel Defense Forces killed two senior Hamas terrorists who were among the leaders of the Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border massacre of some 1,200 people, the army said on Wednesday following strikes in Gaza.

Fahmi Salami, who according to the IDF commanded the elite Nukhba Force of Hamas’s Zeitoun Battalion in Gaza City and led the Oct. 7 assault on the Paga military outpost near Kibbutz Be’eri, was killed in an airstrike on a structure that had previously served as a school.

In addition to leading the Oct. 7 attack, in which 14 soldiers of the IDF’s Golani Brigade died, Salami “promoted and led many acts of terrorism against our forces during the war,” the army stated.

In a separate airstrike in the Jabalia area of the northern Gaza Strip that was carried out last week, the IDF killed Salah Dahman, the head of the terrorist group’s paraglider unit, the army confirmed on Wednesday. Hamas used paragliders to infiltrate the Jewish state on Oct. 7.

Israel “will continue to act decisively against Hamas terrorists involved in the murderous massacre of October 7,” the statement concluded.

IDF ground forces have been fighting in the coastal enclave following a weeks-long air campaign in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion.

Jerusalem’s war goals for the Strip are to destroy Hamas’s capabilities, ensure that it cannot threaten Israel again, and return the remaining 100 captives held by the terrorists.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi on Wednesday emphasized the need for ground operations to defeat Hamas, speaking at a ceremony marking a change of command for the Ground Forces.

Hamas “cannot be defeated without entering Gaza on foot and operating inside the tunnels,” Halevi said. “Without maneuvering, we couldn’t eliminate Hamas operatives, locate infrastructure or cause the enemy real distress.”

He added, “We are far from finished. We will not stop until the hostages are returned and Hamas is eradicated. We will continue as long as Hamas seeks to govern.”

On Tuesday, an IDF aircraft killed 10 Palestinian terrorists responsible for the deaths of three soldiers in the northern Strip the previous day.

“In a joint operation of the 401st Brigade and the Air Force, an aircraft attacked and eliminated 10 of the terrorists who took part in yesterday’s terror act, in which Staff Sgt. Ido Zano, Staff Sgt. Barak Daniel Halpern and Sgt. Omri Cohen, of blessed memory, fell,” the IDF said.

The death toll among Israeli troops since the start of the Gaza ground incursion on Oct. 27 stands at 384, and at 816 on all fronts since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist invasion, according to IDF data.