The Israeli air force struck Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists who were operating a command center embedded in the offices of the "Civil Defense" organization in Nuseirat in the Gaza Strip, the military said on Sunday.
The IDF said the command center was used by terrorists to plan and carry out attacks against soldiers. One of the terrorists eliminated was Ahmed Bakr al-Lawh, who served as a platoon commander in the Islamic Jihad's Central Camps Brigade, the military noted.
In a statement, Hamas said that the Civil Defense director of the Nuseirat refugee camp, Nidal Abu Hajir, and five others were killed in an airstrike.
"The targeting by the criminal occupation this evening of a Civil Defense point in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, which resulted in the death of the camp’s Civil Defense director, Officer Nidal Abu Hajir, and five of his colleagues, represents the fascist occupation army’s insistence on violating all rules and laws by deliberately striking Civil Defense personnel, rescue workers, paramedics, and all groups protected in wars under international law," the terror group said.
Qatari state-owned network Al Jazeera claimed that Ahmed Bakr al-Lawh worked as a journalist and cameraman for the network and said that he was wearing a press vest and helmet.
Al Jazeera claims al-Lawh was a journalist for the network
According to Al Jazeera, al-Lawh had been covering the Israel-Hamas war since 2023 and has been embedded with the Gaza Strip’s Palestinian Civil Defence teams.
Al Jazeera did not address the IDF's announcement stating that al-Lawh was a PIJ terrorist but instead wrote that "the Israeli military said they were looking into the attack."