IDF claims it killed Hamas commander who held hospital patients hostage

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that it killed a Hamas commander who reportedly held hospital patients hostage, using them as a human shield.

“IDF aircraft just struck Ahmed Siam, responsible for holding approximately 1,000 Gazan residents and patients hostage at the Rantisi Hospital, and preventing their evacuation southward,” the IDF posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday.

“Siam was a commander in Hamas’ Naser Radwan Company, and is another example of Hamas using civilians in Gaza as human shields for terrorist purposes,” the IDF’s post continued.

The announcement by the IDF comes on the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel wouldn’t support a government run by the Palestinian Authority in Gaza after its current conflict with the Palestinian militant group Hamas ends. The Israeli prime minister said his country will hold “overall security control” in Gaza “including the capacity to go in whenever we want to eliminate terrorists who may pop up again.”

“I will tell you what there will not be. There will not be Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “There will also not be a civil authority that educates its children to hate Israel, to kill Israelis, to eliminate the State of Israel. There cannot be an authority that pays the families of murderers [amounts] based on the number they murdered.”

“There cannot be an authority whose leader still has not condemned the terrible massacre 30 days later,” he continued, referring to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “That cannot be.”

The war between Israel and Hamas has killed an estimated 11,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.