Direct proof of use
Associated Press reviewed more than 150 videos and photographs from the first three months after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel. Its image captions identify body-camera video from October 7 showing a Hamas fighter holding a Russian-designed 9M32 Strela anti-aircraft missile, and a second frame showing a Hamas fighter firing a Russian-designed 9M32 Strela at an unseen target.
That imagery directly documents Hamas possession and firing of the Strela-2 / SA-7 family during the 2023 Israel-Hamas War. The AP material supports use as a shoulder-fired surface-to-air weapon, but it does not establish that the missile struck or damaged an Israeli aircraft.
Sources: AP Hamas Patchwork Weapons
Timeline
On October 7, 2023, Hamas body-camera footage reviewed by AP showed a fighter carrying and firing a Russian-designed 9M32 Strela during the surprise attack on Israel. On October 26, Anadolu reported an Al-Qassam Brigades statement claiming that Hamas fighters targeted an Israeli helicopter east of Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip with a SAM-7 missile and claimed a hit; the report also noted that, at the time of publication, there was no official Israeli statement on that incident.
Sources: AP Hamas Patchwork Weapons, Anadolu Al-Bureij SAM-7 Claim
Narrative
In the Gaza war record, the Strela-2 / SA-7 appears as an irregular-force air-defense weapon rather than as part of a conventional, state-run air-defense network. AP described Hamas fighters carrying Soviet-era weapons that had been copied or manufactured in Iran and China, including variants of the Russian-designed 9M32 Strela, a portable heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile system.
The documented role was short-range air defense against Israeli aircraft operating around the October 7 attack and subsequent Gaza fighting. The AP imagery proves that Hamas fighters had and fired the weapon; the later Al-Bureij report documents a Hamas claim of a SAM-7 helicopter engagement, not an independently confirmed shootdown.
The parent conflict record lists the side as Hamas and Gaza-based armed groups. For this usage detail, the supported side is Hamas, with the weapon serving as a shoulder-fired air-defense threat within a broader arsenal that AP described as including small arms, machine guns, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and craft-produced anti-tank projectiles.
Sources: AP Hamas Patchwork Weapons, Anadolu Al-Bureij SAM-7 Claim
