TEL AVIV – On Sunday, calm in Gaza collapsed after a fragile ceasefire. Hamas units stormed the Sabra quarter of Gaza City in a sweeping raid. Their target was the heavily armed Doghmush clan, a powerful family militia woven into Gaza’s alliances, feuds, and organised crime. An operation billed as a strike on suspected collaborators quickly spiralled into street battles.
Dozens were killed. The fighting exposed painful rifts inside Palestinian society. Witnesses described homes on fire, children crying under gunfire, and families trapped between warring sides. The clashes erupted just hours before the expected Israeli hostage releases under the ceasefire. With Israeli troops pulling back to agreed lines, Hamas appeared intent on reasserting control over a territory sliding toward chaos.
The violence centred on Sabra, a crowded district in western Gaza City hit hard by past airstrikes. One strike in November 2023 killed 44 Doghmush relatives in a mosque. Before dawn, Hamas fighters, including elite internal security units, swept into the area. They accused the clan of using the ceasefire to work with Israel.
Local accounts say the move followed the clan’s alleged killing of two Hamas men the previous day, one the son of a senior military intelligence figure. Hamas surrounded clan compounds where hundreds of Doghmush gunmen were believed to be holed up. The fighters were said to be armed with weapons stolen from Hamas stores during the war and long-held arms from smuggling networks.
As gunfire raked the alleys and explosions shook the district, casualties rose fast. Ynet reported that at least 52 Doghmush members were killed, including women, children, and civilians caught in the fighting. Hamas losses stood at around 12, according to the same outlet, with more wounded by snipers and improvised bombs.
The BBC counted at least 27 deaths in the first hours. It reported that Hamas targeted a former medical site, the old Jordanian Hospital, where displaced Doghmush families had taken shelter after earlier strikes.
“Children are screaming and dying, they are burning our houses,” a clan relative told Ynet by phone, her words breaking under distant shots. “We are trapped. I do not know how they entered with all kinds of weapons. Where were they when the Jews were here? They arrested all the youths, lined them up against walls, pointed weapons at their heads. There is a massacre here.”
Hamas Targets Children
Videos across social media showed the chaos. Grainy clips appeared to capture Hamas’s Arrow Security Unit trading fire with clan fighters, tracer rounds cutting across dark skies above shattered streets. One video shared by Palestinian journalists showed an assault on a Doghmush compound, met by heavy fire from upper floors.
The fighting spread into nearby areas and pushed hundreds of residents to flee south, echoing the mass displacements of the 2023 to 2025 war. By nightfall, Hamas had reportedly abducted around 30 clan figures, several considered high profile. Others were executed on the spot, according to survivors who described summary punishments.
Unverified claims circulated that Hamas also targeted children from the rival Hilles clan, seen as an anti-Hamas faction, as a form of proxy revenge. Videos of public executions then appeared online to instil fear.
Old animosities and raw power politics sit at the core of this bloodshed. The Doghmush family, sometimes labelled the “Sopranos of Gaza” for mafia-style operations, traces its roots to refugees from Turkey. The clan has long acted as a semi-autonomous force in Gaza’s criminal and armed networks.
Its members have, at different times, aligned with Fatah, the Popular Resistance Committees, and groups linked to Al-Qaeda such as the Army of Islam. Mumtaz Doghmush led that group during the 2006 kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. The clan has fought Hamas since the 2007 takeover of Gaza.
That year, a Hamas raid on a Doghmush base left ten family members dead, among them the infant daughter of a Hamas-affiliated official, in one of Gaza’s worst internal confrontations. In March 2024, Hamas executed the clan’s leader, Saleh Doghmush, accusing him of stealing aid and maintaining ties with Israel, claims the family rejected.
Senior Hamas Leaders Killed
The current war revived these grievances. Israeli operations killed senior Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, and eroded the group’s grip on authority. In the gaps, armed clans like the Doghmush took ground. They looted aid shipments and ran local protection schemes. ACLED has logged more than 220 incidents of intra-Palestinian violence since October 2023, with about 400 deaths.
Roughly 70 percent occurred after temporary truces collapsed. The Doghmush say they lost over 500 relatives to Israeli strikes in two years, including their mukhtar. The clan has mixed resistance with survival, clashing at times with both Israel and Hamas. A senior figure told Ynet, “We still say, you must not shed Muslim blood by a Muslim,” pleading for restraint as the toll rose.
The timing looked deliberate. After the IDF completed its withdrawal on 11 October, Hamas mobilised an estimated 7,000 fighters to retake ground from rising militias. Leaders feared fresh internal conflict that could break their hold on Gaza. Analysts compare the approach to a mafia enforcer, harsh purges of real or alleged collaborators to deter dissent.
The pattern mirrors a 3 October raid on the al-Mujaida clan in Khan Yunis. There, Hamas units fought Fatah-linked gunmen, then retreated when a local anti-Hamas force pushed back, with reported IDF air cover. Since late 2024, as famine and economic collapse deepened, up to a dozen new armed groups have taken root.
High-profile deaths made the shock even greater. Among the dead was Saleh al-Jafarawi, a 28-year-old influencer known as Mr. FAFO. He gained attention for raw war updates and staged “deaths” to dodge strikes. He was shot in the head while filming in Sabra. Reports said Doghmush fighters killed him, accusing him of pro-Hamas bias.
Gangland Methods
Also killed were Muhammad Imad Akl, a member of Hamas’s military wing and son of an 7 October attacker, and Naim Basem Naim, the son of senior political bureau official Bassem Naim. Hamas’s interior ministry confirmed seven internal security deaths in a militia ambush.
By dawn on Monday, 13 October, smoke from burnt homes still hung over Sabra. The ceasefire, praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the beginning of a new path,” looked fragile, overshadowed by serious security threats. International monitors warned of a collapse into banditry, with gangs stripping aid, clans ruling fiefdoms, and Hamas relying on gangland methods to survive.
For 2.3 million people in Gaza, exhausted by two years of war that killed more than 43,000 and displaced almost all, this turmoil brings no relief. It is a bleak twist, Palestinians policing their own suffering.
Even so, small signs of restraint remain. Surviving Doghmush figures issued a call for calm, repeating a line heard after 2024, “We support the resistance, but not at the cost of our blood.” Hamas flooded social media with clips of supposed victories over “traitors,” yet the fractures are visible. One user on X captured the mood, “Gaza eats its own,” a blunt summary of fratricide unfolding in real time.
With hostage releases imminent and limited reconstruction funds arriving, outside powers face a clear choice: support a unified Palestinian authority or watch Gaza splinter into warlord zones.
Sunday’s bloodshed is not just a clan dispute. It shows a wider crisis for Gaza. Years of blockade, corruption, and conflict have produced a generation that prizes survival over ideology. Hamas may have subdued the Doghmush for now, but the risk of a larger revolt remains.
The relative’s cry to Ynet, “Where were they when the Jews were here?”, points to a deeper wound. In the shadow of an external enemy, internal autocrats thrive. Only a real settlement, with power-sharing, disarmament, and accountability, offers a way out. Until then, Gaza’s streets will carry the voices of the innocent, caught in a war turned inward.
