A high-ranking Hamas commander, believed to be responsible for the Kibbutz Nirim massacre in Israel, has been killed in an Israeli airstrike, Israel Air Force (IAF) said in an official statement on Sunday.

The United States is sending a second aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean “to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war following Hamas’s attack,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Saturday.

The USS Eisenhower and its affiliated warships will join another carrier group already deployed to the region in the wake of the attack on Israel a week ago and Israel’s ongoing response.

The deployment signals Washington’s “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security and our resolve to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war,” Austin said in a statement