Overview
- Palestinian Civil Defence and hospitals reported dozens of fatalities, including women and children, from recent Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, which Hamas condemned as a massacre.
- The Israeli military said it struck across the Strip and killed two senior Hamas figures, Abdullah Abu Shammala and Fadi Abu Mustafa, and later reported killing five militants who emerged from an underground site near eastern Rafah.
- The IDF announced it recovered documents in Gaza that it says show direct contacts between Hamas and the Syrian government, Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
- U.S. and Israeli sources described a plan, reported by the Wall Street Journal, to designate Hamas areas as red and Israeli‑controlled areas as green, build temporary ‘safe’ communities starting near Rafah, and eventually transition to a broader stabilization force and local policing; Hamas rejected the concept.
- Regional spillover intensified as Israel deployed the reserve 55th ‘Spearhead’ Brigade in southern Syria and conducted incursions in Quneitra, and it said an earlier strike in Lebanon’s Ain al‑Hilweh killed 13 Hamas members.