The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades on 12/29 announced the deaths of five leaders including spokesman and military media commander Hudhayfah al-Kahlout, better known as Abu Obeida. Abu Obeida was murdered alongside 11 civilians, including his wife and children, by Israel in an August 2025 bombing of his home.
The announcement was given by the new spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, who also has taken the name Abu Obeida. His statement praised the resistance and the steadfast people of Gaza, saying “we boast of belonging to Gaza” and that the victorious Al Aqsa Flood was “an explosion in the face of injustice, oppression, and siege that awakened the conscience of the free peoples of the world and exposed Israel as a Nazi occupation with its sadistic crimes and genocide,” going on to say the Palestinian people “will not surrender, even if they have to fight with their fingernails.”
The new Abu Obeida described his predecessor as an “icon of the free people of the world, the pulse of Palestine, never cut off from his people even in the darkest of circumstances.”
Also announced was the death of Chief of Staff Abu Ibrahim—better known as Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of Hamas leader and Al-Aqsa Flood architect Yahya Sinwar, who himself fell heroically in battle in 2024. Mohammad Sinwar led the operations to capture Israeli soldiers for prisoner exchanges, including the 2011 exchange of a single Israeli soldier that freed Yahya Sinwar alongside over 1000 other Palestinians imprisoned in the Israeli torture camps. The other fallen commanders are Abu Anas, Commander of the Rafah Brigade, who Israel killed alongside Abu Ibrahim, Abu Omar, head of the Weapons Support and Combat Services Department, and Abu Muadh, head of the Manufacturing Department and former head of the Operations Department, which arms the Palestinian resistance with indigenously-manufactured weaponry.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) stated that the spilled blood of the fallen heroes is “fuel for the continuity of resistance and a curse that will burn the occupier’s illusions.” Military analyst Jon Elmer of Electronic Intifada notes that none of these or other assassinations produced observable decline in the resistance’s abilities.
The original Abu Obeida became the military media commander and spokesman in 2004—at the age of 19—when he sent an anonymous report of the 2004 Battle of Jabalia to Al-Qassam leadership. The report was so exceptional in quality that Qassam raised him to the position of spokesman and commander of the media apparatus of Qassam. Under his leadership the number of cameramen rose from a handful to thousands, with media teams embedded in combat units, and with the usage of thousands of GoPro cameras and creatively made cameras in methods that include extracting backup cameras from cars, producing hours of footage that demonstrate the strategic and tactical superiority of the Qassam Brigades over Israeli forces, countering US-Zionist lies and bringing footage of the victorious Palestinian resistance to the world.
Image: The five martyred leaders. Credit: Al-Qassam Brigades.
The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today:
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly
