JERUSALEM  (VINnews) – An Israeli airstrike killed a senior Hamas naval police commander and two other operatives in the central Gaza Strip on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces announced over the weekend.

The strike targeted Mansour Sami Mahmoud Shahtout, commander of Hamas’s naval police in the Central Camps brigade, along with two additional naval police commanders who were traveling with him, the military said.

According to the IDF, Hamas’s naval police unit operates under the terror group’s military wing and is involved in planning and directing attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel. Shahtout had been actively working to advance recent terror operations targeting Israeli forces, the army added.

All three terrorists were armed and traveling in a vehicle at the time of the strike, posing an immediate threat to IDF troops operating in the area, the military stated.