Israel Names Eight October 7 Attackers It Killed During the War

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that following intelligence analysis it could now disclose that Israeli forces had targeted and killed eight men in Gaza who took part in the attack on southern Israel of 7 October 2023, among them figures it holds responsible for the murder and abduction of Israeli civilians.

Four of the eight were named as having taken part in abductions or in holding hostages captive, and four as having crossed into Israel and taken part in the assault itself. The military gave a date of death for each. The announcement carried no locations, no description of how the strikes were carried out, and no evidence beyond the military's own account.

The eight, as the IDF listed them

Those the military linked to abductions and captivity:

• Ahmed Ibrahim Regev Shaer, killed on 22 August 2025: responsible, the IDF said, for the abduction of Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or.
• Ahmed Abu Marheil, killed on 26 March 2025: responsible for the abduction of Avinatan Or.
• Arafat Dib, killed on 30 May 2025: responsible for the abduction of Eitan Mor from the Nova festival and for his captivity.
• Odeh Alian Ahmed Kuwar, killed on 26 August 2025: held Israeli hostages captive.

Those the military said crossed into Israel on 7 October:

• Bakr Mogida, killed on 13 July 2025: breached the border fence using a tractor.
• Faras Greir Suylam Al-Haddaf, killed on 23 August 2025: raided Kibbutz Kissufim.
• Ibrahim Saleh Regev, killed on 6 July 2025.
• Muaid Mahmoud Muhammad Nofal, killed on 27 March 2025.

The festival at the centre of three of the cases

The Nova music festival, formally the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, was held in the western Negev roughly 5km from the Gaza boundary, near Kibbutz Re'im. It became the single deadliest location of the day: an IDF investigation published in April 2025 put the toll at 378 dead, of whom 344 were civilians, and 44 people abducted, according to a compiled account of the massacre. Argamani was filmed being carried away from the site on the back of a motorcycle.

The long hunt behind announcements like this one

Israel has run a systematic effort to find and kill everyone who took part in the attack, led by a Shin Bet security service unit set up immediately afterwards. Around 5,000 attackers crossed into Israel that day, roughly 1,200 of whom were killed during the assault itself; by mid-2026 more than 2,700 had been killed in total, with over 1,500 of those in Gaza in the years since, and about 300 captured and awaiting trial, the Times of Israel reported in July 2026. The campaign continued after the October 2025 ceasefire. Announcements naming individual operatives have come at intervals since: in one later case the military said it had killed a commander it accused of taking part in the abduction of Argamani and Or and directing the seizure of a third hostage, Ynet reported, an indication that responsibility for a single abduction is attributed to more than one person.

What is still unclear

The IDF did not explain what intelligence analysis allowed the disclosure, nor why some of the deaths were announced months after they occurred. It gave no locations for the strikes, said nothing about whether anyone else was killed alongside the eight, and offered no independent corroboration of the roles it assigned to each man. The names in the release are transliterations from Hebrew and Arabic and appear in inconsistent forms; readers should treat the spellings as approximate.