BEIRUT — Israel announced it conducted “a precise targeted strike” on Hamas’ leadership on Tuesday, without elaborating on the strike’s location even as blasts rang out in the Qatari capital Doha and Qatari authorities condemned the “cowardly Israeli attack.”
The attack comes as Israel is ramping up for a full invasion of Gaza City, warning residents to evacuate ahead of a ground operation while stalled negotiations with Hamas appeared to have regained some momentum over the weekend.
“The members of the leadership who were struck led the terror organization’s activities for years, and are directly responsible for carrying out the Oct. 7 massacre and waging the war against the State of Israel,” said a statement from the Israeli military.
The statement referred to the date in 2023 when the Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people — two-thirds of them civilians — and kidnapped 251 others to Gaza, according to Israeli figures. More than 64,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, Palestinian authorities say, have been killed in Israel’s subsequent campaign on the enclave.
Videos and television broadcasts showed black smoke rising from a series of buildings in Doha’s Katara district, a normally quiet residential area where Hamas and several of its top-ranking members have lived for years. One video depicts pedestrians in Katara running and screaming in fear as a pair of explosions echo through the neighborhood.
Qatari security personnel were seen swarming the area and setting up roadblocks.
Qatar agreed to host a political office for Hamas at the request of the U.S. government, it says. Hamas is one of several groups it has allowed on its soil as part of its growing reputation as a regional facilitator. It has hosted repeated mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel over the last 23 months of the war.
Suhail al-Hindi, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in an interview with Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera the attack targeted negotiators meeting to discuss the latest ceasefire proposal issued by President Trump.
He added that senior Hamas officials present at the meeting — including Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mishaal, Zaher Jabarin and Muhammad Darwish — had survived. Al-Hayya’s son and the head of his office were killed.
In its statement, the Israeli military said “measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence.”
But Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari, in a furious statement issued on the messaging platform X on Tuesday, described the strike as “a criminal assault [that] constitutes a blatant violation of all international laws and norms, and poses a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents in Qatar.”
“While the State of Qatar strongly condemns this assault, it confirms that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and the ongoing disruption of regional security, nor any act that targets its security and sovereignty.”
The strike on Doha adds to a growing list of Arab countries Israel has struck in the last month, emphasizing the Israeli government’s more belligerent post-Oct. 7 strategy against its longtime adversaries in the region.
Aside from its expanding campaign in Gaza, the Israeli military has over the last few weeks conducted strikes in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and now Qatar. In June it attacked Iran.
The attack coincided with the Israeli military issuing an evacuation order encompassing the entire city of Gaza.
An unnamed White House official told the BBC that the Trump administration was informed ahead of time of the strike on Qatar, which is home to Al Udeid, the largest U.S. base in the Middle East and the regional headquarters for U.S. Central Command. Some 10,000 U.S. troops are stationed there.
An Israeli official, speaking to Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, said President Trump gave the green light for the operation.
But Netanyahu issued a statement on Tuesday saying “today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation. Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” the statement said.
The strike ignited a flurry of condemnations from regional nations, including the United Arab Emirates, long a proponent of peace ties with Israel and a founding member of the Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered normalization agreements with Israel.
UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan expressed “full solidarity” with Qatar and described the attacks as “barbaric.” Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and others echoed the sentiment with statements of their own.
Tuesday’s attack isn’t the first time Israel has targeted Hamas leaders abroad. In 2010, operatives with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad killed Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh, chief of logistics and weapons procurement for Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
Mishaal survived a previous attempt on his life in 1997, when Israeli agents injected him with poison outside his office in the Jordanian capital Amman; Jordan’s then-King Hussein forced them to provide the antidote.
More recently, Israeli operatives killed Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, in an attack on his guesthouse in Tehran in July 2024.
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