# IDF says it killed two Hamas commanders and sealed tunnels in Gaza
The IDF said it carried out separate strikes on two Hamas commanders in Gaza, one in the Nuseirat area and another in Tuffah. According to the military statement reported by The Jerusalem Post, one of the men had participated in the October 7 massacre and both were said to have been planning attacks on soldiers in the Strip.
The report also said the army later confirmed strikes in the Al-Shati area that killed four Hamas Nukhba operatives. The military identified them by name and rank, saying they were active in planning assaults on IDF troops. In the Israeli account, these were not random casualties but targeted actions against people it described as battlefield commanders and assault planners.
The same update said the Gaza Division Combat Engineers had sealed two Hamas tunnels with a combined length of more than two kilometers. Drone footage released by the military showed underground passages packed with sandbags, reinforcing the point that the tunnel network remains one of the main objects of Israel's engineering campaign in Gaza.
The military said troops were operating in line with the ceasefire agreement while still removing what it called immediate threats. That language matters because it presents the operation as a limited security action rather than a return to full-scale war, even as the strikes and tunnel work show the conflict remains active and violent.
The source also notes that Palestinian casualty figures from separate reporting circulated alongside the military announcement, but the clearest factual thread in the packet is the IDF's own claim: that it had targeted commanders, killed several Nukhba operatives and shut down tunnel infrastructure it considered a direct danger to its forces.
The tunnel piece is important because underground infrastructure remains one of the hardest parts of the Gaza war to measure from outside. The IDF's claim that the tunnels were more than two kilometers long is meant to show both engineering scale and tactical value. Sealing them is as much about reducing future attack options as it is about present-day destruction.
The report also shows how targeted strikes and engineering work are being narrated together. Israel is presenting the killing of commanders and the collapse of tunnels as part of one continuous security campaign. That framing matters politically, because it lets the military argue that even under ceasefire terms it still has a duty to remove threats it sees as immediate.
For readers trying to follow Gaza coverage, the useful distinction is between the Israeli operational claims and the separate civilian casualty reporting that accompanied them. The military statement is focused on who it says it targeted and what it says it destroyed. The wider human cost, however, continues to be tracked by other sources and remains part of the same conflict picture.
The tunnel part of the story also speaks to a long-running reality in Gaza: underground infrastructure is not just a battlefield feature but a strategic asset. When the military says it has sealed tunnel routes, it is trying to show that it can deny movement, not merely punish attacks after the fact. That distinction helps explain why the engineering work sits alongside the airstrikes in the same update.
