Senior Hamas officials likely survived Israeli strikes on Doha, Israeli sources say
Security footage captures the moment of an Israeli strike targeting Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, on September 9, 2025. (Photo by Security Camera/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(DOHA, Qatar) — Israel has informed the U.S. that the chances of success of its strikes Tuesday on a Hamas residence in Doha, Qatar, have “decreased significantly,” two Israeli sources familiar with the matter told ABC News — likely confirming Hamas’ assertion that the strikes failed to kill top Hamas officials.
Five Hamas members and a Qatari official were killed in the strike. Hamas’ senior leaders survived the strike, Hamas said Tuesday.
“There was a meeting of the negotiating team and some Hamas leaders to discuss the ideas sent by the United States and the paper sent by President Trump,” Hamas political bureau official Suhail al-Hindi told Al Jazeera of when the strike took place.
Among those killed were the son of a senior Hamas leader, Dr. Khalil Al-Hayya — the head of the Hamas movement in Gaza and the head of Hamas’ negotiating team for a ceasefire with Israel — and an aide. Al-Hayya himself survived, according to Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel acted “wholly independently,” and took “full responsibility” for the strike in Doha on Hamas leadership in a brief statement Tuesday.
Netanyahu said he “convened the heads of Israel’s security organizations,” at noon local Israeli time Tuesday and “authorized a surgical precision strike” on Hamas leadership.
The strike targeted the residential headquarters of several members of the Hamas Political Bureau in Doha, according to Qatar.
Israel has faced criticism over the attack, with Arab nations, the United Kingdom and France all condemning the attack that took place on sovereign land.
“I’m not thrilled about the whole situation. It’s not a good situation, but I will say this, we want the hostages back, but we are not thrilled about the way that went down today,” Trump said.
“I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect, and we got to get the hostages back, but I was very unhappy about the way that went down,” Trump said.
Qatar also condemned the attack, saying the “criminal attack constitutes a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms and a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents of Qatar,” a spokesperson for Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted on X.
Qatar said it will continue to mediate ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel, as it has done alongside Egypt.
Hamas leadership and its primary negotiators have been based in Doha for years while trying to get a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Israeli officials said the strikes on Doha were “completely justified,” alleging this Hamas leadership initiated and organized the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
“Israel’s security policy is clear — Israel’s long arm will act against its enemies everywhere. There is no place for them to hide,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement Wednesday.
“If the Hamas murderers and rapists do not accept Israel’s conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all hostages and the disarmament of their weapons — they will be destroyed and Gaza will be destroyed,” Katz said.
Qatar is home to the largest U.S. military base in the region. Al Udeid Air Base was attacked by Iran in June in retaliation for U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, with Qatari forces helping the U.S. to intercept the missiles.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. “feels badly” about the location of the attack and added that “unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” in a statement read by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
(LONDON) — Ukrainian teenager Katya says she was living with her foster parents in the Russian-occupied region of Kherson in 2023 when Russian authorities approached her family and told them they would take her to a summer camp. But, in reality, she says she was being trained for military service.
“The school told us we are going for a vacation to the sea,” she tells ABC News in Kyiv, Ukraine. “Then we traveled for three days by bus, on the third day we were put on a train. And we were sent to a military camp.”
“Katya,” who has asked to remain anonymous to protect her identity, was 16-years-old at the time but now, at 18, she tells ABC News that she used to get up “at seven in the morning, had breakfast by nine, did exercises, then we went to the orientation. During orientation, we were forced to learn the Russian anthem and the anthem of this platoon.”
There were both Russian and Ukrainian teenagers in the military camp, which was inside Russian territory, Katya said. But Ukrainians were forbidden from speaking Ukrainian or expressing their identity, and told they were being trained to fight for the Russian army.
They would be forced into punishment exercises if they did not comply, she said. Katya can be seen doing squats and push ups in a video taken inside the camp shared with ABC News.
“As our instructors told us, we were being prepared for war,” she said. “They told us that as soon as we turned 18 [we would go to fight.]”
Katya was just one of thousands of Ukrainian children estimated to have been taken into Russia since the invasion of Feb. 24, 2022, with Ukraine saying that more than 19,500 children have been abducted or forcibly displaced into Russia since then.
Just over 1,500 children have been rescued from Russia, with almost half of those facilitated by Save Ukraine, a charity dedicated to the return of Russian children who helped Katya get back to Ukrainian territory after her weekslong ordeal in the military camp.
“Her story is really common, because now what we see from children who were rescued recently, we see that all of them were engaged in some military activities,” Natalia Savchenko, the head of communications at Save Ukraine, told ABC News. “It’s a policy and we see that the policy of Russia now is to take Ukrainian children, erase their identity, and force them to take part in military activities and, after that, make them Russian soldiers.”
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children’s rights in 2023. The ICC said they were allegedly “responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
Russia, however, denies kidnapping the children and claims it evacuated them for humanitarian reasons.
The prospect of an elusive ceasefire dominated the agenda at the Alaska Summit last month when President Trump hosted Vladimir Putin and hand-delivered a letter written by first lady Melania Trump, calling for the protection of children. The letter did not specifically mention Ukrainian children taken into Russia.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also raised the subject of Ukrainian children who have been taken into Russia when European leaders met with the U.S. President last month as well.
“This issue lies at the heart of the war’s humanitarian tragedy — our children, broken families, the pain of separation,” Zelenskyy said.
“It is a subject at the top of all lists and the world will work together to solve it, hopefully bringing them home to their families,” President Trump said.
Savchenko told ABC News that she hoped the diplomatic efforts would help “change the future of these children.”
“But at the same time, we continue to do our work, we are continuing to rescue them, to rehabilitate and to reintegrate, because these are Ukrainian children, and we cannot surrender. And let them be in the hands of war criminals,” she continued. “In our mind discussion about Ukrainian children should be done before the discussion about lands, because children, they are our future. It’s not the question of politics. It’s a question of humanity.”
(WASHINGTON) — After President Donald Trump threatened to impose “very severe” economic penalties against Vladimir Putin’s Russia if he doesn’t agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine within 50 days, the Trump administration has so far declined to provide many additional details about the consequences Russia will face or why he picked the deadline he chose.
“Well, at the end of 50 days, if we don’t have a deal, it’s going to be too bad,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.
When asked why he decided to give the Russian leader nearly two months to comply with his demand, President Trump deflected.
“I don’t think 50 days is very long. It could be sooner than that,” Trump said.
“You should have asked that same question to Biden. Why did he get us into this war?” he continued. “You know why he got us in? Because he’s a dummy, that’s why.”
Despite pledging additional U.S. made weapons for Ukraine, Trump also said he didn’t support Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy ordering strikes on the Russian capital.
“He shouldn’t target Moscow,” he said. “No, we’re not looking to do that.”
On Monday, Trump said that Russia’s failure to reach a negotiated settlement with Ukraine within 50 days would lead to his administration imposing a 100% tariff rate on Russian imports as well as what he called “secondary tariffs” on countries that have continued to do business with Moscow.
“We’re very, very unhappy with him,” Trump said of Putin on Monday. “We’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days.”
U.S. imports from Russia, which totaled around $3 billion in 2024 according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, account for a small share of Moscow’s revenue, meaning Trump’s threat to hike tariffs on Russian goods likely wouldn’t pack much punch.
However, the president’s promise to raise tariffs on imports from third-party countries could carry more weight.
Some secondary sanctions aimed at weakening Russia’s war economy are already in place. The Biden administration steadily ramped up its use of the penalties throughout the conflict, primarily targeting foreign financial institutions accused of supporting Moscow’s military industrial complex and the so-called “shadow fleet” of tanker operators working to circumvent Western sanctions and price caps on Russian oil.
But going after countries that import oil and other resources from Russia would be a significant escalation.
Through much of the war, the Biden administration avoided taking direct aim at Russian energy exporters out of concern that doing so would cause global fuel prices to rise. Instead, the former administration worked with other members of the G7 to cap the price of Russian oil products, cutting into Moscow’s profits while allowing the exports to remain on the market.
Trump, on the other hand, has previously promised to go after Russia’s customers.
In March, Trump threatened to put “secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia” during an interview with NBC News — adding “if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States.”
What countries would feel the impact?
The White House has yet to release specific details on Trump’s secondary tariffs, but his ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, said on Monday the top importers of Russian oil would be in the administration’s crosshairs.
“It’s about tariffs on countries like India and China that are buying their oil. And it really is going to I think dramatically impact the Russian economy,” he said during an interview with CNN.
But whether the secondary tariffs would stop at countries like China and India is an open question.
Despite the web of sanctions in place against Russia, the country still has many meaningful trade relationships, including ones with European allies.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU has significantly dropped its share of Russian oil and gas imports and its plan to fully phase out those imports isn’t expected to fully come to fruition until the end of 2027 at the earliest.
Some Eastern European and Central Asian countries also have economies that rely on doing business with Russia, meaning they would almost certainly be unable to significantly scale back trade with Russia and would have the face the consequences of secondary tariffs.
The next 50 days
If the president sticks to his 50-day window, Russia can continue to carry out its summertime campaign against Ukraine until early September without facing additional consequences.
In his interview with CNN, Whitaker was also asked about how Trump made the decision on the timeline but didn’t give a clear answer.
“The time to end the slaughter is now. The time to end the killing is now. And so 50 days is the appropriate amount of time because it needs to happen now,” he responded.
Currently, Russia is making modest gains against Ukraine and may soon seek to leverage those advances to launch additional offenses in the eastern reach of the country, according to a recent assessment from the Institute of the Study of War.
Many officials and experts have long predicted that the Kremlin would push off serious talks on ending the war until the cooler months set in because it hopes to strengthen its position at the negotiating table by claiming as much territory as possible during the summer season.
In an interview with the BBC on Monday, Trump indicated he still wanted to pursue diplomacy with Russia, but that his patience with Putin was wearing thin.
“I’m not done with him, but I’m disappointed with him,” he said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to Trump’s threats on Monday, saying Moscow needed “time to analyze” the comments.
“The U.S. president’s statements are very serious,” Peskov said.
(NEW YORK and LONDON) — Polish airspace was violated by at least 19 Russian drones overnight, the country’s prime minister said, in a torrent of activity that triggered a response from the NATO country’s air force, which scrambled and downed several of the drones.
“Those drones that posed a direct threat were shot down,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said early on Wednesday on social media. “I am in constant communication with the Secretary-General of NATO and our allies.”
Two Polish F-16s and two Dutch F-35s were deployed to “help ensure safety in Polish skies,” the military said. The operations ended early on Wednesday, Warsaw said, adding that the search continued for downed drones and potential impact sites.
The country’s military command described the violations as “unprecedented,” saying they amounted to “an act of aggression that posed a real threat to the safety of our citizens.”
Polish authorities did not report any casualties related to the drone incursion.
Tusk said this marked the first time in history that Russian drones had been shot down on NATO territory, which he said “changes the political situation.”
Tusk told parliament on Wednesday that Warsaw had requested the invocation of NATO Article 4. The clause allows a NATO member to convene a meeting of allies to consult on an issue that could threaten its security.
“Today we must say very loudly and clearly to the entire Western world and all our allies — Article 4 is only the beginning of deeper cooperation for the security of our skies and our border, which is NATO’s border, and words alone are by no means enough,” Tusk said.
“This is not just a war for Ukrainians,” he added. “This is a confrontation that Russia has declared against the entire free world.”
Tusk said that at least 19 Russian drones entered the country’s airspace late Tuesday and into early Wednesday, some of which crossed over from Belarus, and at least three were subsequently shot down by Polish and NATO forces.
Poland previously invoked Article 4 on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which triggered urgent NATO consultations at the time.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in a statement Wednesday morning that allies had held discussions after Poland’s Article 4 request. “Allies expressed solidarity with Poland and denounced Russia’s reckless behavior,” Rutte said. “A full assessment of the incident is ongoing. What is clear is that the violation last night is not an isolated incident.”
“Allies are resolved to defend every inch of allied territory,” Rutte added. “We will closely monitor the situation along our eastern flank, our air defenses continually at the ready.”
U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to speak with Polish President Karol Nawrocki on Wednesday, a White House official told ABC News. The official added that Trump and the White House are “tracking the reports out of Poland.”
NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) said in a statement to social media that German Patriot surface-to-air missile systems based in Poland were placed on alert and that an Italian airborne early warning aircraft was deployed during the incursion. A NATO aerial refueling aircraft was also launched.
Col. Martin L. O’Donnell, a spokesperson for SHAPE, said in a statement, “This is the first time NATO planes have engaged potential threats in Allied airspace.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday referred journalists’ questions to Russia’s Defense Ministry.
“This is not within our competence, it is the prerogative of the Russian Ministry of Defense,” Peskov told reporters.
Asked to comment on accusations by Europe and NATO that the incident was a Russian provocation, Peskov replied, “The EU and NATO leadership accuse Russia of provocation on a daily basis, most often without even attempting to present any arguments.”
Peskov added that Russia had not received any requests for contact from Poland’s leadership.
In a post to Telegram, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its “massive strike” was only aimed at targets within Ukraine. “No targets on the territory of Poland were planned,” it said.
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the incident as “simply unacceptable.” He in a post to X, “I call on Russia to put an end to this reckless escalation. I reiterate to the Polish people and their government our full solidarity.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in post to X, “Europe is in a fight. A fight for our liberty and our ability to determine our destiny for ourselves.”
“Today, we have seen a reckless and unprecedented violation of Poland and Europe’s [airspace] by more than 10 Russian Shahed drones,” von der Leyen added. “Europe stands in full solidarity with Poland.”
European Union foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas described the incident as “the most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began,” adding that “and indications suggest it was intentional, not accidental.”
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker, meanwhile, said in a post to X, “We stand by our NATO allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy early on Wednesday described the violation as “another escalation step.”
“An extremely dangerous precedent for Europe,” he said in Ukrainian on the messaging app Telegram.
It was not immediately clear whether Russia had intended to send the drones into NATO airspace. Russian and Ukrainian drones have been known to go off course during long-range strikes due to electronic warfare measures employed by the combatants.
The incursions occurred during a major Russian strike on Ukraine, which the air force in Kyiv said consisted of 415 drones and 35 missiles. Of those, 386 drones and 27 missiles were intercepted or suppressed, the air force said.
The Kremlin did not immediately issue a statement but Zelenskyy positioned the violation as anything but an accident — saying it might have been considered one if it had been just one drone that crossed the border.
Zelenskyy called for consequences for Russia, saying Moscow “must feel that the war cannot be expanded and must be ended.”
Military officials in Poland earlier said the country’s airspace was “repeatedly violated by drone-type objects” in the overnight hours amid Russian strikes on targets in Ukraine.
“An operation is underway aimed at identifying and neutralizing the objects,” the Polish military said in one of its initial statements, each of which urged people to stay at home.
The most threatened areas had been Podlaskie, Mazowieckie and Lubelskie, Poland said. Polish security services said they sent an SMS message to cellphones in the area — sending the type of alert that’s become a nightly occurrence in neighboring Ukraine.
Earlier, the Polish military said it had scrambled jets and was taking “preventative” action during the “massive attack” carried out by Russia on facilities in Ukraine.
“Polish and allied aircraft are operating in our airspace, and ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have reached the highest state of readiness,” the military said in the earlier statement.
Tusk, the Polish prime minister, convened an extraordinary government meeting early on Wednesday, bringing together the country’s emergency and military officials.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who also serves as foreign affairs minister, met prior to that meeting with Andrii Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign affairs minister, according to Poland. Jacek Najder, Poland’s representative to NATO, was also present, the country’s Foreign Ministry said.
“The security of Polish women and men is the greatest priority,” the ministry said prior to the meeting.
Tusk in the emergency cabinet meeting said the there was “no reason to panic,” according to the Chancellery.
“The procedures were implemented correctly, the decision-making process was flawless, and the threat was effectively eliminated thanks to the resolute actions of commanders, soldiers, and our allies,” Tusk said during the meeting, according to his office. “I am deeply grateful.”
The Defense Ministry in Belarus — which is aligned with Russia and has assisted its invasion of Ukraine — said in a statement that its forces also downed drones that went off course “as a result of the impact of the parties’ electronic warfare assets.”
Minsk said it shared information with neighboring Poland and Lithuania regarding the incoming drones. “This allowed the Polish side to respond promptly to the actions of the drones by scrambling their forces on duty,” the ministry said.
The ministry added that Polish forces had also notified Belarusian forces of incoming unidentified aircraft from Ukrainian territory.
A Lithuanian Defense Ministry official told ABC News that there were no violations of Lithuanian airspace overnight.
In Romania — which borders Ukraine to its southwest — the Defense Ministry said two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled in response to a “group of aerial drones in the area of the Ukrainian town of Valcov, on the border with Romania.”
No drones entered Romanian airspace, the ministry said in a statement.
ABC News’ Dada Jovanovic, Morgan Winsor, Natalia Popova, Oleskiy Pshemyskiy, Patrick Reevell, Anna Sergeeva, Anne Flaherty and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
