By Charlie McCarthy    |From Newsmax

The Israeli military on Sunday said it killed another Hamas commander who led the terrorist group’s massacres of civilians in southern Israel last weekend.

Billal al-Qedra, commander of Hamas’ so-called Nukhba unit’s southern Khan Younis battalion, was killed as a direct result of intelligence efforts by the Shin Bet security agency and Military Intelligence Directorate, The Times of Israel reported.

“He was responsible for the murderous raid in Kibbutz Nirim and Nir Oz,” said the IDF, which added that several other Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were killed in airstrikes overnight in the Gaza Strip, the newspaper reported.

Israeli military officials also said they were preparing to eliminate all Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, the militant group’s leader in Gaza.

“Mr. Sinwar is a dead man walking,” IDF international spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The news came a day after Israeli military said it killed two Hamas commanders — Merad Abu Merad, head of the Hamas aerial system, and Ali Qadi, a company commander of a commando force — involved in the deadly rampage into Israel.

IDF troops on Sunday also killed a Palestinian terrorist in the kibbutz of Nir Am, near the Gaza border.

Another IDF spokesman said the military’s main focus in its ground attack would be to rescue the hostages, “most likely” being held underground.

Also on Sunday, the IDF said five people were injured when Hezbollah fired antitank missiles on the northern Israeli town of Shtula, near the Lebanese border.

The Times of Israel reported that, following a 12-hour lull, warning sirens blared in a number of Israeli southern towns Sunday morning. A rocket launched from Gaza struck a home and sparked a fire in Sderot, a town of roughly 7,000 households. There were no reports of casualties.

The city’s citizens, who were encouraged to evacuate, were being moved to hotels in Eilat and Jerusalem.

Israel was preparing to launch a ground assault in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, after telling Palestinians living in the densely populated area to flee south toward a closed border with Egypt.

The Journal reported that thousands of Palestinians in the northern part of Gaza fled south “by foot, in cars, and on donkey carts” during a three-hour window in which the IDF vowed not to carry out airstrikes on a central road.

The death toll in Gaza since last weekend stood at 2,329, the Ministry of Health said, the Journal reported.

Israeli authorities said 1,400 citizens and 286 soldiers had been killed since the attack began Oct. 7, with 126 people taken hostage.

Reuters contributed to this story.

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