Israel carried out airstrikes on the Palestinian Gaza Strip on Friday, saying it was targeting Ezzedine Al-Haddad, the chief of the Hamas militant group’s armed wing.

The Israeli military in a statement announcing the strike targeting Haddad said he was one of the “principle masterminds” of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on southern Israel, which triggered its two-year war on Gaza.

Israel did not say whether he was killed in the Friday strike.

Medics in the devastated enclave were cited by the Reuters news agency as saying Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least seven people in Gaza including three women and a child. At least 50 were injured in the strikes, which targeted an apartment and a vehicle.

An October ceasefire agreement brokered by the US has significantly slowed Israeli attacks in Gaza and fighting with Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization in Israel, the US, Germany and other countries.

However, Israeli strikes on the strip have continued, and intensified since a ceasefire in the US-Israeli war on Iran and Israel’s war on Lebanon. Both Israel and Hamas regularly accuse one another of violating the ceasefire.

Israeli forces still occupy more than half of the Palestinian enclave, amid a deadlock over the next step in US President Donald Trump’s post war plans for Gaza.

Since the ceasefire in October, at least 856 Palestinians have been killed, according to local health authorities, while the Israeli military puts the death toll among its soldiers within the same period at five.