The IDF and the Shin Bet said Wednesday evening that they killed terrorist Muhammad Issam Hassan al-Habil, a Hamas cell commander who murdered surveillance soldier Noa Marciano while she was held hostage in Gaza.
The IDF said Habil was killed in an airstrike in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, in response to gunfire in which a reserve company commander was wounded, an act that constituted a violation of the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
ISA questionings uncovered that the terrorist brutally murdered female observer, Corporal Noa Marciano, in Hamas captivity. Marciano was abducted from the Nahal Oz outpost during the terrorist organization’s brutal October 7th massacre.
In recent months, Abdullah Abu Rayala and Naim Ghul, Hamas operatives responsible for holding Marciano in captivity, were also killed in Gaza. Three months before Ghul was killed, another operative who had held the slain surveillance soldier was eliminated.
Habil led the rehabilitation of Hamas’ local battalion in Shati, which ultimately was not attacked in October, even though the neighborhood in western Gaza City was encircled. The battalion was not targeted because Operation Gideon’s Chariots II was halted.
Marciano was abducted by terrorists to a safe apartment near Shifa Hospital in Gaza. During IDF strikes in the area at the time, one of the terrorists holding her was killed and Marciano was wounded, but not critically. Later, as the IDF spokesman revealed after her death, she was taken inside Shifa Hospital, where she was murdered by the same terrorist who was killed on Wednesday.
Marciano served at a ground collection base with Battalion 414 of the Border Defense Corps. In November 2023, soldiers from the Engineering Brigade located her body near Shifa Hospital and recovered it.