Israel's defense minister has admitted for the first time that Israel killed the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in July.
Israel Katz made the comments in a speech vowing to target the leaders of the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, which has been firing missiles and drones at Israel.
Haniyeh was killed in a building where he lived in the capital of Iran in an attack that caused many Israelis.
Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that some progress had been made towards agreeing a ceasefire in Gaza with Hamas, but he could not give a timeline for when an agreement would be reached.
It comes after a senior Palestinian official told the BBC that the negotiations between Hamas and Israel were 90% completebut key issues remained.
In her speech, Katz said that Israel would “hit hard” at the Houthis and “undermine” its leadership.
“Just as we did with Haniyeh, (Yahya) Sinwar, and (Hassan) Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza, and Lebanon, we will do so in Hodeida and Sanaa,” he said, referring to the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas who were all killed this year.
Haniyeh, 62, was widely regarded as a key Hamas leader and played a key role in negotiations aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
After his assassination, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza and one of the main architects of the October 7 attacks, as the group's overall leader.
Sinwar was was killed by the Israeli army in a chance incident in Gaza in October and the group is still choosing a new leader.
At the same time Hassan Nasrallah was the leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group – he was he was assassinated in Beirut in September as Israel dramatically increased its military campaign against Hezbollah, with whom it had been trading near daily cross-border fire since the day after the October 7 attacks.
The Houthis, an Iranian-backed rebel group that controls northwestern Yemen, began attacking Israeli and international ships in the Red Sea shortly after Israel began targeting Hamas there in Gaza last October.
The group has promised to continue until the end of the war in Gaza.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said they were trying to shoot him down a project launched from Yemen unsuccessful and the missile hit a park in Tel Aviv. A Houthi spokesman said the group hit a military target using a hypersonic ballistic missile.
Last week Israel launched strikes against what it said were Houthi military targets, hitting ports as well as energy infrastructure in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. The US and the UK have also attacked Houthi targets as part of operations to protect international shipping.
Hamas attacked Israel last October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
In response, Israel launched a military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza that has continued for more than a year and killed 45,317 people according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the Strip.
That figure includes 58 people killed by Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, Hamas officials said. Local medical officials said at least 11 people were killed in three separate strikes on the al-Mawasi area, which has been declared a “safe zone” by the Israeli military. Israel said it was targeting a Hamas fighter.
On Monday Israel said three of its soldiers were killed in the northern Gaza Strip.
Humanitarian and rights groups have warned of a dire situation for civilians in Gaza.
On Sunday Oxfam said just 12 trucks had delivered food and water in northern Gaza over the past two and a half months and blamed the Israeli military for “deliberate delays and setbacks -systematic barrier”.
“For three of these, once the food and water was delivered to the school where people were taking shelter, it was cleaned and disinfected within hours,” said Oxfam.
Israeli authorities said the report “deliberately and wrongly” ignored the “extensive humanitarian efforts carried out by Israel in the northern part of the Gaza Strip”.
Israel claimed that special shipments “including food, water, and medical supplies” were sent to the northern areas of Gaza, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia, where is the Israeli military has been doing military operations for several months they say. targeting Hamas fighters who had gathered there.
Oxfam's report comes after rights groups Amnesty accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of committing “acts of genocide” by providing adequate access to water for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Israel's foreign ministry described Amnesty's report as “completely false and based on lies” while an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said Human Rights Watch was “once again spilling its blood… The truth is completely opposite of HRW's lies”.
