Israel Kills the Head of Hamas’ Weapons Factory. Ra’ad Sa’ad Helped Design October 7.
On Saturday, December 13, 2025, the Israel Defense Forces, in coordination with the Israel Security Agency (the Shin Bet, or ISA), carried out a targeted strike that the IDF says killed Ra’ad Sa’ad— Head of Hamas’ Weapons Production Headquarters and, by the IDF’s account, one of the architects of the October 7 massacre. A drone struck his vehicle on the coastal Rashid Road west of Gaza City.
Sa’ad was among the last surviving senior commanders of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and was widely described as the group’s second-in-command. The IDF said he helped plan the “Jericho Wall” blueprint on which the October 7 attack was based, oversaw the weapons that armed it, and worked to rebuild and expand Hamas’ arms production after the war began.
The strike was the most senior Hamas elimination since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025. Hamas confirmed his death the next day and called the strike a ceasefire violation; Israel said it acted in response to a Hamas explosive that wounded its troops hours earlier. It is also part of a sustained campaign that has since killed Sa’ad’s successors one after another.
- Dec. 13, 2025the date of the IDF–ISA strike on Ra’ad Sa’ad’s vehicle west of Gaza City — IDF official release · Times of Israel
- No. 2his standing in the Hamas military hierarchy, per Israeli security assessments — Israel Hayom · Ynet · Dec. 2025
- “Jericho Wall”the invasion blueprint he helped author, on which the October 7 attack was based — IDF release · Wikipedia / open-source reporting
- Oct. 10, 2025when the ceasefire took effect — making Sa’ad the most senior commander killed since — CBS News · Washington Post · 2025
- 3Hamas military-wing chiefs killed in succession in the months that followed — Haddad, Odeh, and a weapons-production head — FDD’s Long War Journal · Times of Israel · 2026
Not a frontline fighter — a builder. The man who armed the arsenal.
By the IDF’s account, Ra’ad Sa’ad held a series of senior posts across two decades inside Hamas’ military wing. He commanded the Gaza City Brigade, then served as Chief of Staff for Operations — a role in which the IDF says he oversaw the establishment of the Nukhba forces, the elite shock units that spearheaded the October 7 assault. He was later appointed Head of Hamas’ Weapons Production Headquarters, the body responsible for manufacturing rockets, explosive devices, and other arms for the Qassam Brigades.
Open-source reporting traces his role in arms manufacturing, rocket-arsenal development, and the founding of a Hamas military academy. Israeli security sources regarded him as the organization’s second-most senior figure within the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades by the time of his death. He maintained close ties to Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas’ military wing, who was himself killed earlier in the war.
The detail that makes the role consequential is its function: a weapons-production chief is not interchangeable with a field commander. His value to Hamas was institutional knowledge — how to build, where to build, and how to keep building under bombardment. That is why the IDF framed the strike less as the removal of a fighter than as a blow to the organization’s capacity to rearm.
A vehicle on the coast road, west of Gaza City. Hours after a Hamas explosive wounded Israeli troops.
The strike came mid-afternoon on Saturday, December 13, 2025. An Israeli drone hit Sa’ad’s vehicle as it traveled along the coastal Rashid Road on the Hamas-controlled side of the ceasefire line, west of Gaza City. Palestinian media reported that the strike killed several people and wounded more than twenty others. Israeli reporting indicated Sa’ad had surfaced from a tunnel in which he had operated for months not long before the strike.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a joint statement that Sa’ad was killed in response to a Hamas explosive device that had wounded Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza earlier that day. They described him as “an architect of the October 7 attacks.” The IDF’s public release added that Sa’ad had remained directly involved in Hamas’ violations of the ceasefire agreement and had continued to oversee weapons production in Gaza even during the truce.
- →Target: Ra'ad Sa'ad, Head of Hamas' Weapons Production Headquarters; described as one of the architects of the October 7 massacre.
- →Operation: A targeted IDF strike carried out in coordination with the ISA (Shin Bet), on a vehicle west of Gaza City.
- →Roles cited: Former Gaza City Brigade commander; Chief of Staff for Operations; helped plan the 'Jericho Wall' blueprint and establish the Nukhba forces.
- →Wartime role: Responsible for restoring and expanding Hamas' weapons-production capabilities; explosive devices produced under his authority were used against IDF troops.
- →Ties named: A close associate of Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas' military wing.
ELIMINATED: Ra'ad Sa'ad, Head of the Weapons Production Headquarters of Hamas' Military Wing and one of the architects of the brutal October 7th massacre. Sa'ad was one of the last remaining veteran senior militants in the Gaza Strip and a close associate of Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas' military wing.
“Jericho Wall” was the blueprint. He helped write it.
The phrase the IDF used — “one of the architects of the October 7 massacre” — points to a specific document. “Jericho Wall” was the operational plan, developed in response to Israel’s underground border barrier, that envisioned deploying the bulk of Hamas’ fighting force in a mass cross-border assault. According to open-source accounts and Israeli officials, Sa’ad was part of the inner circle that planned and coordinated it, and the October 7, 2023 attack drew on its design.
That attack killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and saw some 250 taken hostage into Gaza — the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust. The Nukhba shock units the IDF says Sa’ad helped establish were central to it. In the IDF’s framing, his elimination closed out one of the last surviving senior planners directly tied to that day.
“Sa'ad was one of the last remaining veteran senior militants in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel Defense Forces · @IDF · December 13, 2025
In posts on Truth Social around the ceasefire, Trump framed the Gaza deal as a hard-won agreement that brought the hostages home and was meant to end the war — while warning Hamas that breaking its terms would carry consequences.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
The most senior killing since the truce began. Both sides called the other the violator.
The strike landed inside a fragile arrangement. The U.S.-brokered ceasefire — built on President Trump’s comprehensive Gaza framework, signed at Sharm el-Sheikh on October 9, 2025 — took effect on October 10. Its first phase delivered a halt in major fighting, surged humanitarian aid, and the return of the living hostages and the remains of the dead. By late January 2026, the IDF had recovered the last deceased hostage.
But the truce was contested from the start. Hamas confirmed Sa’ad’s death and called the strike a violation of the agreement, even as it publicly rejected demands that it disarm. Israel maintained that it was responding to a Hamas explosive that wounded its troops and to Sa’ad’s own continued weapons activity during the truce. U.S. officials, according to reporting at the time, privately viewed the strike as a breach and conveyed their displeasure to Netanyahu.
That dispute set the tone for the months that followed. The second phase of the plan — the harder questions of Hamas disarmament and Gaza’s political future — was announced in January 2026 but stalled. By spring, monitors and UN officials were warning that the ceasefire was holding only loosely, with continued strikes, contested control of Gazan territory, and a disarmament process the UN described as paralyzed.
- →Oct. 9, 2025: Israel and Hamas sign the first-phase implementation steps of Trump's Gaza framework at Sharm el-Sheikh.
- →Oct. 10, 2025: The ceasefire takes effect; major fighting pauses and hostage exchanges begin.
- →Dec. 13, 2025: The IDF kills Ra'ad Sa'ad — the most senior Hamas commander eliminated since the truce began.
- →Jan. 2026: Phase two announced by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff; the last deceased hostage is recovered; talks soon stall over disarmament.
- →May–June 2026: UN and monitors warn the truce is fraying; IDF reports continued ceasefire violations and kills successive Hamas military chiefs.
Sa’ad was one of several. Israel kept killing the men who replaced the dead.
Sa’ad’s elimination fits a pattern that ran through late 2025 and into 2026: a systematic targeting of the surviving senior leadership of Hamas’ military wing. Mohammed Sinwar, the wing’s head and a key October 7 planner, had been killed in a precision strike earlier in 2025. In the spring of 2026, the IDF confirmed killing Izz al-Din al-Haddad, whom it described as one of the last architects of October 7 — and then killed his successor, Mohammed Odeh, roughly ten days after Odeh stepped into the role.
The IDF has also continued to strike the weapons-production apparatus Sa’ad once led. In late May 2026, the military said it had killed Muhammad al-Habash, who headed a Hamas weapons-production headquarters, in the same strike that killed an operative who handled millions of dollars in Hamas funds. Taken together, the strikes describe a deliberate decapitation campaign aimed at both the commanders who could direct Hamas and the engineers who could rearm it.
Whether that campaign degrades Hamas faster than the organization can regenerate is the open strategic question. Each named commander is replaceable on paper; the institutional knowledge of how to manufacture and rebuild an arsenal is harder to replace. That is the logic behind targeting a weapons-production chief specifically — and the reason the IDF foregrounded that role in announcing Sa’ad’s death.
As the second phase of the ceasefire stalled, Trump's Truth Social posts pressed the demand that Hamas disarm and warned that the group's leadership would face the consequences of any continued attacks — language his administration tied directly to the October 7 attack.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Israel's official account and government channels framed the campaign against Hamas' military leadership as a direct consequence of October 7 and of continued attacks on Israeli forces — naming the commanders eliminated and tying each to the planning, arming, or execution of the massacre. (Representative of the State of Israel's official messaging; see profile for specific posts.)
A senior planner is dead; the war he helped start is not over. The ceasefire holds, loosely.
What is confirmed is specific and attributable: on December 13, 2025, an IDF strike carried out with the ISA killed Ra’ad Sa’ad, Head of Hamas’ Weapons Production Headquarters and, per Israel, an architect of October 7, on the coastal road west of Gaza City. Hamas confirmed the death and called it a ceasefire violation; Israel said it was a response to a Hamas explosive that wounded its troops. He was the most senior Hamas figure killed since the truce began.
What remains open is larger. The casualty count from the strike was reported by Palestinian media and has not been independently confirmed in every particular. The disarmament of Hamas — the central unresolved demand of the ceasefire’s second phase — has not happened. And the strategic effect of eliminating one weapons-production chief, however senior, depends entirely on whether Hamas can replace the knowledge he carried.
For now the record is this: a man who, by Israel’s account, helped design and arm the deadliest day in Israeli history is dead, killed inside a ceasefire that both sides accuse the other of breaking. The fighting that October 7 set in motion has paused but not ended. This page will be updated as the IDF, the ISA, and ceasefire monitors release further attributable information.
