The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Thursday that it had killed a Hamas commander who led the attack on dozens of civilians on October 7, 2023, who had fled the Nova music festival and hidden in roadside shelters.
In addition to being a mass murderer, the IDF said, Mohammad Abu Itiwi had also worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
Hamas terrorist Mohammad Abu Itiwi during the October 7 terror attack. (IDF)
The IDF and Israel Security Agency (ISA, or Shabak, or Shin Bet) said in a statement:
Yesterday (Wednesday), in a joint IDF and ISA operation, the IAF struck and eliminated the terrorist Mohammad Abu Itiwi, a Nukhba commander in the Al Bureij Battalion of Hamas’ Central Camps Brigade. Mohammad Abu Itiwi has also been employed by UNRWA since July 2022.
On October 7th, Mohammad Abu Itiwi was involved in the murder and abduction of Israeli civilians. Abu Itiwi led the murderous attack on the bomb shelter on Route 232 in the area of Re’im in southern Israel.
Throughout the war, Abu Itiwi directed and carried out numerous attacks on IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip.
Following the incident, representatives of COGAT solicited clarifications from senior officials in the UN and international community and requested an urgent investigation into the involvement of UNRWA employees in the October 7th Massacre.
The IDF also provided documentation with evidence that Mohammed Abu Itiwi had been employed by UNRWA.
The shelters were the scenes of some of the most brutal murders on October 7. Many such shelters, made of concrete, stand alongside bus stops in southern Israel, due to the threat of rocket fire that existed for years before October 7.
Hundreds of young people escaping the attack on the Nova festival instinctively ran to the shelters — and that is where Hamas chased them, throwing grenades into the shelters and spraying AK-47 machine gun fire into them.
There were very few survivors; those who did survive were often kidnapped, and held as hostages by Hamas in Gaza.
There were also moments of heroism: Aner Shapira, an off-duty Israeli soldier in a shelter, caught several grenades and threw them back at the terrorists before they exploded. He taught others to do the same before he was killed.
The shelters were painted over and still stand today as memorials to the fallen, visited by thousands of Israelis.
Thursday marked the anniversary of the October 7 terror attack on the Hebrew calendar, on 22 Tishrei 5784.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
