Trump threatens to 'go in and kill' Hamas if Gaza killings continue

16 Oct 2025, 18:20 by Daragh Brophy, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/daragh-brophy/ · TheJournal.ie

LAST UPDATE | 21 hrs ago

US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has threatened to “go in and kill” Hamas if it keeps killing people in Gaza, in an apparent reference to recent shootings of Palestinian civilians following a ceasefire deal with Israel.

Trump’s comments come just days after he said that the Hamas shootings – which include public executions – “didn’t bother me much” and described them as killings of gang members.

“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.

Trump did not elaborate on what he meant by “we.” But he said on Wednesday that “we won’t need the US military” to be involved in Gaza.

Since the partial withdrawal of Israeli forces in Gaza under the US-backed 20-point ceasefire deal, Hamas has been tightening its grip on ruined cities, launching a crackdown and executing alleged collaborators in the street.

The top US commander in the Middle East, Admiral Brad Cooper, had demanded on Wednesday that Hamas stop shooting Palestinian civilians and adhere to Trump’s plan.

But Trump himself has until now been relaxed about the killings, saying that the White House had “approval for a period of time” after Hamas had been “open” about wanting to “stop the problems” in the devastated territory.

“That didn’t bother me much to be honest with you,” Trump said on Tuesday.

“It’s a couple of very bad gangs. It’s very different than other countries,” he said in a cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.

Outcry over condition of Palestinians’ bodies

Meanwhile, there has been outcry over the reported condition of bodies of Palestinians returned from Israel to Gaza

A French-Palestinian MEP has been among those who have expressed alarm at the condition, with

posted on social media about the condition of one of the bodies

Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian MEP, posted on social media about the condition of one of the bodies.

“Here is the state in which the bodies of Palestinian political prisoners are returned by the Israeli genocidal regime,” she said.

Hassan said bodies had been “hanged, eyes blindfolded”, with their “feet and hands handcuffed” when returned to Gaza.

Under the terms of the ceasefire deal, Israel has agreed to hand over the bodies of 15 Palestinians in return for every deceased Israeli hostage.

Netanyahu says fight ‘not over yet’

Earlier, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the fight “is not over yet”, and that he is determined to ensure that Hamas hands back the remains of hostages still in Gaza.

Under a ceasefire agreement spearheaded by US President Donald Trump, Hamas returned the last 20 surviving hostages to Israel, and said it had handed back all the bodies of deceased captives that it could access.

The ceasefire also, for the most part, paused the war after two years of agony for Palestinians and the hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023.

The remains of 19 hostages are still unaccounted for, with Hamas saying it would need specialist recovery equipment to retrieve the rest from the ruins of Gaza, which Israel has been bombing.

Israel has returned the bodies of 30 Palestinians to Gaza. This brings the total number of bodies that Israel has returned to 120, it says.

At a state ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the 7 October attack, Netanyahu said Israel was “determined to secure the return of all hostages”.

“The fight is not over yet, but one thing is clear – whoever lays a hand on us knows they will pay a very heavy price,” he said.

On Monday, the fifth day of this truce, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in separate incidents, after troops opened fire on people they labelled “suspects”.

Still, Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz is pinning the fragility of the ceasefire on Hamas. He threatened to resume fighting if Hamas does not honour the terms of the truce.

But Trump appeared to call for patience in order to safeguard the deal.

“It’s a gruesome process, I almost hate to talk about it, but they’re digging, they’re actually digging,” he said of Hamas’s search for hostages’ remains.

“There are areas where they are digging and they’re finding a lot of bodies. Then they have to separate the bodies, you wouldn’t believe this. And some of those bodies have been in there a long time, and some of them are under rubble.”

Building peace

Planning is under way for an international force to enter Gaza to stabilise the security situation, two senior US advisors have said.

There are up to two dozen US troops in the region to help set up the operation, the advisors said, according to the Reuters news agency.

“The goal is to use all the different local partners who want to help and be involved,” one added.

The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar and Azerbaijan are considering involvement in the international force, it’s understood.

Speaking earlier this week Tánaiste Simon Harris said it’s “highly unlikely at this stage” that Irish peacekeepers will be deployed to the region in the current phase of the ceasefire process.

“Ireland and our peacekeepers always stand ready to serve where there is peace, but at the moment what we’re simply seeing is a cessation of hostilities.

“So I think there’s a long way to go of being able to determine that.”

According to Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza, the next phases of the truce should include the disarming of Hamas, the offer of amnesty to Hamas leaders who decommission their weapons and establishing the governance of post-war Gaza.

Aftermath

For many in Gaza, while there was relief that the bombing had stopped, the road to recovery felt impossible, given the sheer scale of the devastation.

“There’s no water – no clean water, not even salty water, no water at all. No essentials of life exist – no food, no drink, nothing. And as you can see, all that’s left is rubble,” said Mustafa Mahram, who returned to Gaza City after the ceasefire.

“An entire city has been destroyed.”

The war killed at least 67,938 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry.

The data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but indicates that more than half of the dead are women and children.

With reporting from AFP and Eoghan Dalton

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