The senior Hamas commander Raed Saedhas been killed in a strike on a car in Gaza City, the Israeli military said on Saturday.

The attack killed four people and wounded at least 25 others, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.

“In response to the activation of a Hamas explosive device that wounded our forces today … prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz instructed the elimination of the terrorist Raed Saed, head of Hamas’ force buildup,” the prime minister and the defence minister said in a joint statement.

The Israeli military described Saed as “one of the architects” of the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. The military earlier on Saturday said two reserve soldiers were lightly injured after the device detonated “during an operation to clear the area” in southern Gaza.

Saed’s death would be the most significant assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a ceasefire deal came into effect in October.

An Israeli defence official said Saed had been targeted in the attack, describing him as the head of Hamas’s weapons manufacturing force.

Hamas sources have described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing, after Izz eldeen al-Hadad.

Saed used to head Hamas’s Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best equipped, those sources said.

The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 70,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, health officials in Gaza said.

The 10 October ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins. Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.

But violence has not completely halted. Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed at least 386 people in strikes in Gaza since the truce. Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire began, and it has attacked scores of fighters.