'Eliminated': Who is Ramzi Ramadan, killed in a June 30 Israeli airstrike on a cafe?

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on Sunday declared that they had eliminated Ramzi Ramadan Abd Ali Saleh in an airstrike last Monday, in addition to two other targets.

Saleh, who had been the Commander of Hamas' naval forces in the Northern Gaza Strip, had been eliminated in an airstrike on an internet cafe in Gaza City. The Israeli military also confirmed that Saleh had been an important target of the airstrike, owing to his significant intelligence on various Hamas operations. 

The IDF also claimed that he had recently been “involved in planning and advancing maritime terrorist attacks against IDF troops operating in Gaza”.

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The other two Hamas targets eliminated were Hisham Ayman Atiya Mansour, the Deputy Head of a Hamas mortar cell, and Nassim Muhammad Suleiman Abu Sabha, who belonged to Mansour's mortar unit.

In a statement after the cafe strike, the IDF explained that it had been targeting "terrorists", and that steps had been taken to "mitigate the risk of harming civilians using aerial surveillance". Yet, reports say the airstrike finally led to as many as 24 deaths.

This announcement comes amid an Israeli delegation's departure to Qatar on Sunday to discuss a possible US-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal, and hours before Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Washington visit to meet US President Donald Trump, as per a Reuters report.

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On Friday, Hamas had even responded in a “positive spirit” to that ceasefire proposal, signalling its readiness to enter immediate negotiations with Israel on a deal that could pause the nearly two-year-long war in Gaza and lay the groundwork for a permanent resolution.

The response, delivered to mediators Egypt and Qatar late on Friday, is one of the most significant progress towards the resolution of the Israel-Gaza conflict, as public pressure mounts on Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire and bring about an end to the devastating conflict.

Middle East