Israeli forces have located and killed the Palestinian militant accused of abducting hostages Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
The Israel Defense Forces said on X that Saher Nidal Latfi Sakr supplied weapons to Hamas during the conflict and drove the motorcycle used to seize Argamani and Or from the Nova music festival before taking them into Gaza.
“Recently, Sakr advanced attacks targeting Israeli civilians and IDF troops. He was eliminated in order to remove the threat he posed,” the military said.
Video showing Argamani being abducted from the desert rave, where nearly 400 festivalgoers were killed, was among the earliest footage to emerge from the massacre and quickly became one of the attack’s most recognisable images.
In the footage, Argamani sits behind her Hamas captor on a motorcycle, screaming, “Don’t kill me!” as she reaches toward Or, who was her boyfriend at the time.
Additional footage shows her crying out as several militants handle her on the motorcycle. One of the men can be seen forcibly pulling a black bag over her head.
Sakr was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza during an operation carried out by Israel Police’s Gideonim Unit 33.
According to the IDF, Sakr was linked to “global jihadist organisations” and had participated in attacks against Israeli civilians and military personnel.
Israel has tracked down and killed the Palestinian militant suspected of kidnapping Israeli hostage Noa Argamani during Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023
Footage of Argamani’s kidnapping at the desert rave, where almost 400 partygoers were killed, was one of the first videos of the massacre to surface
Saher Nidal Latfi Sakr was killed in an airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, in an operation by Israel Police’s Gideonim Unit 33
The military also alleged that Sakr worked “in cooperation with terrorist operatives from the military wings of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organisations, in systematic violation of the ceasefire agreement.”
Footage released by the Israeli military, said to capture the moment Sakr was killed, shows the militant walking beside a building before a huge blast erupts.
The video appears to show his remains on the pavement as thick clouds of smoke billow upward.
Argamani, who is of Chinese heritage, was rescued from Gaza on June 8, 2024, following 246 days in captivity.
During her time as a hostage, she saw another captive executed, came close to being killed in an airstrike and was deliberately deprived of food. She also spent each day fearing that her terminally ill mother, Liora, had died in Israel.
Doctors later described Argamani’s survival as a “miracle”, saying she had received no medical treatment while in captivity.
Or, who was held separately in central Gaza, was freed after 738 days under a ceasefire agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump in October 2025.
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Hamas launched its unprecedented assault at 6.29am on October 7, 2023, storming across Israel’s border in an attack that became the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.
More than 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage during the assault.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive plunged the Gaza Strip into a humanitarian crisis and has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry – figures considered reliable by the UN.
Sakr operated ‘in cooperation with terrorist operatives from the military wings of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organisations, in systematic violation of the ceasefire agreement,’ the IDF said
The IDF said he was affiliated with ‘global jihadist organisations’ and was part of attacks on troops and Israeli civilians
Argamani, who has Chinese heritage, was rescued from Gaza on June 8, 2024, after 246 days in captivity
President Trump’s Board of Peace unveiled a $2.45billion plan last week to begin rebuilding Gaza, but officials acknowledged it faces an uncertain future as Israel and Hamas remain at odds over terms of the US-backed ceasefire.
The proposal, laid out by board officials at an event during the UN General Assembly in New York, consists of 66 programmes that would rehabilitate Gaza’s infrastructure and economy, destroyed by two years of full-scale Israeli military assault.
It was the latest plan aimed at advancing Trump’s Gaza ceasefire, which was announced nearly a year ago but has failed to halt Israeli attacks on Gaza, including one on September 23 that killed four people, one of whom was a Hamas official.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in New York: ‘Obviously this is a longterm project. It’s not something that can happen in six months. But at least gives people a hope. Here’s the future that awaits you if everyone does their part.’
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who devised the Gaza plan while backing Israel’s right to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza if Hamas does not disarm, acknowledged the proposal faced ‘different delays on different things, for whatever reason’.
‘We’re just refining, sharpening the axe, getting ready for when we get to the time to cut the tree,’ Kushner said. ‘And hopefully, that will be very, very soon.’
Nearly a year after a ceasefire ended major fighting in Gaza, reconstruction has yet to begin with negotiators failing to agree conditions for Hamas to lay down its weapons and Israel to withdraw its troops.
Most buildings have been destroyed and more than two million residents are confined to around a third of the enclave’s territory, mostly in tents or crowded rooms in damaged buildings among the ruins.
The Board of Peace plan estimates physical damage in Gaza at $35.2billion and says full recovery and reconstruction will require about $71.4billion over the next decade.
Its plan calls for repairing border crossings, restoring electricity and water infrastructure, deploying 25,000 portable solar power kits and permanently filling tunnels beneath sites needed for priority reconstruction projects.
Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s lead Gaza envoy, said that he and other officials do not want Gaza to go back to the way it was before the war.
‘We want to give people a new chance, and we want to make sure that both the Palestinians in Gaza and Israeli communities living across the border have a chance to put behind them this fear of violence that has driven their lives for so many years,’ Mladenov said.
