In the shadowed alleys of Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, justice caught up with Muhammad Issam Hassan al-Habil, the Hamas commander who orchestrated the cold-blooded murder of 19-year-old Israeli soldier Corporal Noa Marciano. The Israel Defense Forces, acting on precise intelligence, eliminated al-Habil in a targeted airstrike on February 4, 2026, delivering a measure of retribution for one of the most heart-wrenching atrocities stemming from Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
This strike not only removed a key perpetrator from the battlefield but also underscored the unrelenting pursuit of those who target the innocent amid a conflict that has dragged on far too long, with ceasefires repeatedly shattered by terrorist aggression.
Noa Marciano’s story begins on that fateful October morning in 2023, when thousands of Hamas fighters breached Israel’s borders in a coordinated assault that claimed over 1,200 lives and saw more than 250 people dragged into Gaza as hostages. Stationed at the Nahal Oz outpost as a surveillance soldier, Marciano was among those abducted in the chaos. Her role in the IDF involved monitoring threats from afar, a duty that placed her on the front lines of vigilance against the very militants who would later seal her fate. For weeks, her family clung to hope, as did the families of dozens of other captives, amid sporadic negotiations and international pleas for their release.
What followed was a nightmare compounded by deception. On November 9, 2023, Marciano sustained nonfatal injuries during an Israeli airstrike aimed at Hamas positions. Rather than provide medical care, her captors transported her to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City—a facility long suspected of serving as a dual-purpose hub for medical treatment and terrorist operations. There, under the guise of a civilian sanctuary, al-Habil, as head of a Hamas terror cell, personally ensured her death. Interrogations of captured Hamas operatives later revealed the brutal details: Marciano was murdered in the hospital, her life extinguished not by her wounds but by deliberate act.
Hamas attempted to spin the narrative, releasing propaganda videos claiming Marciano had died from airstrike injuries. But forensic evidence from a pathological report conducted by Israeli authorities painted a different picture: her wounds were survivable, and the true cause of death pointed to execution.
Noa’s father, in a poignant revelation, described how she was killed by an injection of air into her veins—a method as cruel as it is calculated. Her body was recovered by IDF forces near Shifa Hospital in mid-November 2023, allowing her family to lay her to rest in Modi’in, though the pain of her loss remains an open wound.
The operation that felled al-Habil came swiftly after Hamas violated yet another ceasefire agreement. Overnight on February 3-4, 2026, militants launched an attack in northern Gaza, wounding several IDF troops, including a reserve officer severely injured in the Daraj Tuffah area. In response, Israeli forces struck a group of terrorists approaching a restricted zone in southern Khan Younis before turning their sights on al-Habil’s cell in Shati. Intelligence gathered by the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), including from interrogations of detained suspects, pinpointed his location and confirmed his direct role in Marciano’s murder. The Gaza Division, to which Noa had belonged, played a key part in assembling the puzzle that led to this strike.
Al-Habil was not alone in his demise. The airstrike also eliminated Bilal Abu Assi, a Nukhba platoon commander who spearheaded the massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and oversaw hostage operations while plotting further attacks on Israeli troops. Joining them in death was Ali Raziana, commander of the Northern Gaza Brigade for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed group allied with Hamas. These kills represent a tactical blow to the terrorist networks still operating in Gaza, disrupting chains of command that have prolonged the suffering on both sides of the border.
Adi Marciano, Noa’s mother, captured the bittersweet reality of this development in her statement: “We were promised that everyone involved in Noa’s murder in Gaza would be eliminated, and this promise was kept today.” She added, “There is no real comfort in this. But there is knowledge that justice was done, even if only partially. Nothing will bring Noa back to us.” The IDF echoed this sentiment, noting that al-Habil’s elimination brings partial closure to the Marciano family and reaffirms their commitment to hunting down all perpetrators of the October 7 horrors and those who continue to threaten Israeli lives.
This incident highlights a disturbing pattern in Hamas’s tactics: the exploitation of hospitals and civilian infrastructure as shields for military activities. Shifa Hospital, where Marciano met her end, has been repeatedly cited in intelligence reports as a command center for Hamas, complete with underground tunnels and weapon caches. While legacy outlets have sometimes downplayed these claims, mounting evidence from on-the-ground operations and detainee testimonies paints a clear picture of how terrorists embed themselves among the vulnerable, endangering Gaza’s civilians in the process.
As the war grinds into its third year, with fragile ceasefires crumbling under renewed aggression, al-Habil’s death serves as a reminder that accountability, though delayed, is inevitable. Noa’s memory endures not just in the grief of her loved ones but in the resolve of a nation determined to root out the evil that stole her future. Operations like this one signal that the fight against terror persists, driven by facts on the ground rather than fleeting diplomatic illusions.
