Growing assessment that no senior Hamas officials killed in Doha, Israeli official tells ‘Post’
Israel has assessed that the additional bodies found in the building, reported in Arab media as “unidentified,” are not those of senior officials.
Concerns are growing in Israel that no senior Hamas officials were killed in the IDF’s strike on Doha on Tuesday, although the incident is still being investigated, an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
Israel has assessed that the additional bodies found in the building, reported in Arab media as “unidentified,” are not those of senior officials. There remains a possibility that the body of a senior official was removed from the site.
Some senior Hamas officials are believed to have been injured, although this has not yet been fully confirmed. According to initial findings, the senior officials were likely in a different room than first thought. Because the strike targeted a specific room, the damage in the area where the senior officials were located was relatively minimal.
The IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) confirmed on Tuesday an attempt to assassinate Hamas’s leadership in Doha.
Earlier on Thursday, Qatar held funerals for the six killed in the Israeli airstrike, though it did not name those who were killed, rather referring to them as five Palestinians and one Qatari security officer, according to London-based Asharq al-Awsat.
People attend a funeral held for those killed by an Israeli attack in Doha, including Corporal Badr Saad Mohammed Al-Humaidi Al-Dosari, a member of the Internal Security Force, at the Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab Mosque in Doha, Qatar, September 11, 2025. (credit: Qatar TV/Reuters TV via REUTERS)
Previous assessments have also doubted the strike’s success in killing senior Hamas leaders. Israeli officials have yet to publicly provide clear indications of the state of Hamas leaders.
Israeli sources switch to pessimism on outcome of Doha strike
If, in the early hours after the attack, the Post received optimistic, off-the-record signs that several Hamas leaders were indeed killed, by 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning, those signs from the Israeli sources had switched to pessimism.
By Wednesday night, the prevalent narrative in Arab media reports suggested that the top Hamas leaders had left their cell phones in one room while moving to another to pray, and thus survived the attack.
Yonah Jeremy Bob and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
