Israeli forces killed a top commander of the militant Hamas group in an overnight airstrike on southern Gaza, Israel said Sunday. A Hamas statement confirmed the killing of Samir Mahmoud Hassan Abu Younis, commander of the group's Rafah Brigade, and said a funeral would be held for him later in the day. The Israeli military said Abu Younis was killed in a strike just after midnight Saturday, and that he had been working to build up Hamas and directing plans "to advance and carry out terror attacks." Two months earlier, his predecessor was also killed in an Israeli strike. The military said it targeted other Hamas militants in Sunday's strike but provided no additional details.
In a separate development, Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed early Sunday that it struck a radar system at an American helicopter base in Bahrain, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. The U.S. military's Central Command did not immediately comment. The claim follows a CENTCOM statement on Friday that it had intercepted two Iranian drones headed toward Bahrain and had denied Iran's earlier claim that it struck a U.S. early-warning radar there. Bahrain's military said its air defense systems had intercepted a number of Iranian projectiles before they reached their targets, and Bahrain's Interior Ministry issued two nationwide alerts warning of a threat, the first such alerts since September. The ministry did not specify the nature of the threat or say whether anything had been hit.S1
Jordan's State Security Court on Sunday sentenced three men to death for a deadly shooting at a Greek Orthodox Church in the city of Karak last month, state-run Al Mamlaka TV said. The men were charged with "carrying out terrorist acts." The Oct. 23 attack was one of the deadliest on Jordan's Christian minority in decades, with nine people killed and dozens more wounded, as attackers targeted mourners attending a funeral at St. George's Church in Karak. A Jordanian court sentenced the three men to death by hanging for carrying out the attack.S1S2
Elsewhere in the region, health authorities with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said an airstrike on Sanaa wounded two women and two children, and blamed Saudi Arabia for the attack without offering evidence.S1
