By Caitlin Doornbos | New York Post
A Hamas terrorist caught on video Oct. 7 swigging a bottle of soda in front of two young boys whose dad he just murdered was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza over the weekend.
The fiend, Ahmed Fozi Wadia, was one of the cutthroat paragliders who breached Israel’s border by air that day.
The Hamas battalion commander “raided” and “commanded the slaughter” of Israel’s Netiv HaAsara settlement eleven months ago — only to be killed in an Israel Defense Force airstrike along with seven other Hamas terrorists Saturday, the Israeli military said Tuesday.
Wadia’s horrific attack on the family in the settlement Oct. 7 was among the day’s most sickeningly memorable moments recorded and shown privately to journalists by the Israeli embassy in the war’s early months. The brutality was captured in a video on the family’s home-security video system.
In the clip, the father, 46-year-old Gil Taasa, was seen running with his two little boys into a bomb shelter as terrorists raided his home. Wadia then lobbed a grenade into the small shack of shelter, but Taasa threw himself on it to shield his children – ages 8 and 12.
The boys were later shown bloodied and comforting each other inside their home as Wadia stood over them, drinking their cola.
“[Saturday’s] precise strike on the compound where the terrorists were operating was located near the Al-Ahli Hospital compound in Gaza City,” the Israeli military said in a statement. “No strike was conducted inside the Al-Ahli Hospital premises.
“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence,” said the military — as criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and calls for a hostage deal mount from the left.
One of the other terrorists killed in the IDF strike “was responsible for several combat specialties in the Daraj Tuffah Battalion, including engineering, sniping, and anti-tank operations,” the IDF added.
That fighter, who was not named in the statement, “was responsible for supplying the explosives used to blow up the security fence in the Daraj Tuffah Battalion’s area during the Oct. 7 Massacre.”
The airstrike happened two days after Israel’s forces found six hostages, including an Israeli-American, shot dead in Hamas’ underground tunnels in Gaza.
The discovery prompted protests from some on the left who are outraged that Netanyahu is continuing Israel’s war on Hamas nearly a year after the group took more than 200 Israelis hostage.
President Biden himself criticized the Israeli leader, telling reporters Monday that Netanyahu was not doing enough to reach a hostage deal.
In November, Israel and Hamas did a prisoner exchange in which Israel got 105 hostages back. After the six – including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin – were discovered dead over the weekend, an estimated 101 hostages remain in captivity in the Gaza Strip.