A human rights investigation has documented nine extrajudicial executions and one unlawful killing by Hamas forces in Gaza, all but one of them immediately after the ceasefire announced with Israel in October 2025, and has called on Hamas authorities to halt such killings and hold those responsible to account.
The findings follow an announcement last month by security officials of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, that a man had been summarily executed for allegedly spying for Israel, and that another suspected collaborator would be executed within days.
A public execution, then a family exposed
On 1 July, a covert security body linked to Palestinian armed factions announced it had publicly executed a man in Gaza City, identifying him only by his initials. His full name and personal details then circulated on social media, first through Hamas-linked accounts, placing his family at serious risk. He had been accused of passing Israeli forces the locations of senior Qassam figures, including its military commander, Izz al-Din al-Haddad.
Eight men shot in a Gaza City street
Around 10 October 2025, fighting broke out between Hamas forces and the Dughmush family after an attempt to remove relatives from a field hospital in the Sabra neighbourhood. Hamas forces surrounded the family’s block for a week; at least four family members and one Hamas member were killed.
On 13 October 2025, eight unarmed men from the family were publicly executed on allegations of collaboration. Verified video shows them blindfolded and bound, led by masked gunmen into Thalathini Street and shot at close range. A relative said the men surrendered after being promised a fair trial, and were executed in public two hours later.
Investigations without outcomes
Mousa Abu Marzouk, who heads Hamas’s international and legal relations department, said the movement opened a preliminary internal inquiry into the Dughmush case and that security forces acted on immediate impulse without referring to higher authority. In a separate case, a man in his late fifties was shot at home in Bureij refugee camp on 17 October 2025 during an attempted arrest. Hamas confirmed a formal investigation and said he was shot by mistake while fleeing, but the family was never told the outcome and no one was held to account.
A report by the international commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel recorded 249 cases of extrajudicial execution and severe physical violence in Gaza between August 2024 and January 2026, causing 108 deaths, with Hamas forces involved in at least 60 of them. No announced inquiry has produced accountability in the past three years, including in civilian deaths described as mistaken-identity shootings. Hamas has defended what it calls exceptional measures by citing the destruction of judicial and security institutions by Israeli forces. Rights groups say the collapse of law and order followed conditions imposed by the war, but that no authority exercising effective control is relieved of the prohibition on extrajudicial killing, torture and arbitrary detention.
This report was produced by the HuMedia newsroom.
