Only Seven Hamas Fighters Named
Among 436 Palestinians Killed by Israel
in ‘Historic’ 18 March Attacks
The Cradle
(March 29, 2025) — Israeli media reported on 29 March that the Israeli army launched 80 airstrikes on Gaza in the early hours of March 18, killing nearly 300 women and children, while naming only seven Hamas resistance fighters and leaders killed in the attacks.
After the attack, in which Israel unilaterally ended the ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli media celebrated, claiming that hundreds of Palestinian resistance fighters were killed, rather than women and children.
Israeli newspaper Maariv claimed that “more than 300 terrorists were liquidated within a few minutes… thanks to extraordinary cooperation between the Shin Bet [security service] and the air force.” The Hebrew paper described it as “one of the greatest preemptive operations in military history.”
“Last night,” the paper gushed, “some 300 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists got a surprise visit from air force bombs that landed on their heads. The sortie was perfect.”
And Channel 12 News reported the attacks with the headline, “Hamas taken by surprise, 400 militants killed.”
However, according to Haaretz, the official Israeli military announcements contain the names of only seven members of Hamas who were targeted and killed in that night’s raid.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reported 436 killed in the attack, among them 183 children, 94 women, and 34 people over the age of 65.
Haaretz reports further that Gaza’s hospitals immediately experienced a flood of horrifically injured patients in the wake of the bombings.
Dr. Mohammed Mustafa, an emergency physician from Australia who was volunteering at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, described what he saw and experienced.
“We’ve worked throughout the entire night. The bombing has been nonstop… We’ve run out of all painkillers… There are seven girls getting their legs amputated, no anesthesia… It was mostly women and children, burned head to toe, limbs missing, heads missing. [A man] died on the way to the CT scan…. [The] three girls lying on the bed, they’re his girls. They are now orphaned. Their mother didn’t even make it into the hospital. She was killed along with their other sister… I was here in June, nothing to this intensity… The screams are everywhere… The smell of burned flesh is still in my nose.”
Some of the Israeli bombs targeted tent camps of displaced persons. “People were sleeping, and they bombed the tents on their head; there are dozens of killed and wounded, most of them children,” an inhabitant of the Khan Yunis tent camp said in a video posted to social media that night.
Among the dead was Bisan al-Hindi, who was killed with her brother Ayman in the attack on Khan Yunis. “Beautiful, gentle Bisan was loved by everyone,” her mother said, eulogizing her. “How glowing her face was. I miss her so much, her dimples, her wide eyes, like the eyes of a doe. Her hair with the fragrance of amber. Beloved of my heart, please come to me in a dream. I will try to sleep only in order to dream of you.”
At least 17 members of the Jarghoun family were killed when Israeli forces bombed their house in Rafah. Ramadan Abu Luli told Haaretz that his sister was killed in an attack along with her husband and her three daughters. “Two missiles were fired at the house,” Abu Luli related. “Four brothers were killed with their wives and children. The grandfather and grandmother were also killed. All the brothers in that family lost their homes in the war, so they moved into their parents’ home. Now the bombs reached them too.”
Since the night of March 18, many more Palestinians have been killed by ongoing Israeli bombings.
“From March 18 to 25, 830 people were killed, including 174 women and 322 children, and 1,787 others were injured,” said Maryse Guimon, UN Women’s Special Representative for Palestine, in a press conference from Geneva, via video link from the Jordanian capital, Amman.
