[IsraelTimes] Army chief Halevi visits troops, praises ’very, very successful’ campaign at hospital, as fighting continues throughout GazooThe IDF and Shin Bet security agency on Saturday announced that four senior Hamas, one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede, bad boyz were potted by troops at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital in recent days.
Troops have been raiding buildings at the hospital complex, following intelligence indicating that brass hats in the terror group are holed up there. They’ve arrested hundreds of terror operatives and killed over 200 in days-long exchanges of fire at the complex.
In one incident, the IDF said troops of the Navy’s Shayetet 13 unit, Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion and Duvdevan unit encountered and killed a group of armed Hamas operatives who ran out of Shifa’s emergency room.
Among them was senior Hamas commander Raad Thabet — named by the IDF on Thursday as the head of the terror group’s recruitment and supply acquisition — and Mahmoud Khalil Zakzuk, who the IDF says is the deputy commander of Hamas’s rocket unit in Gaza City.
In another incident, troops of the Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance unit killed senior Hamas operatives Fadi Dweik and Zakaria Najib during a chase at Shifa’s maternity ward, according to the IDF.
The IDF and Shin Bet say Dweik was a senior member of Hamas’s intelligence division. He perpetrated the 2002 terrorist shooting attack in the West Bank settlement of Adora, killing four civilians, and was exiled to the Gaza Strip in the 2011 Shalit deal with Hamas, in which Israel released 1,027 Paleostinian terror convicts in exchange for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. In Gaza, he continued to advance attacks in the West Bank, defense officials say.
Najib, according to the IDF and Shin Bet, was a senior operative in Hamas’s so-called West Bank headquarters, tasked with promoting attacks against Israel from the West Bank. He is accused of involvement in the 1994 abduction and killing of Nachshon Wachsman, and was also released in the 2011 Shalit deal.
Other Hamas button men have been killed by troops in and around the hospital, the IDF said, adding that troops have seized weapons and intelligence documents.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi hailed the ongoing operation at Shifa Hospital during a visit to the medical center on Friday.
"Almost two weeks, very, very successful, and this is an operation... to plan it in a war, to carry it out in a war, to execute it correctly in a war, [is] very, very complex," Halevi told troops.
"So far [there have been] very great achievements... no one can roll back [the effects of] such a large number of arrested terrorists, such a large number of dead terrorists, so many senior people," he said.
Halevi said the operation has "achieved its goal," but added that it will continue "thoroughly until it is announced that we are done."
The Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said Saturday that at least 32,705 people had been killed in the territory during more than five months of war between Israel and the Paleostinian terror group.
The toll includes at least 82 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 75,190 people had been maimed in the Gaza Strip since the war was triggered by the devastating Hamas-led onslaught against Israel on October 7.
The Hamas-run ministry’s figures, which are unverified, do not differentiate between fighters and civilians, and are also believed to include Paleostinians killed by terrorists’ misfired rockets. Israel says some 13,000 terror operatives are among the dead.
Earlier Saturday the Paleostine Red Islamic Thingy said five people were killed and dozens maimed by gunfire and a stampede during an aid delivery in Gaza.
AFP said it had footage of a convoy of trucks moving quickly past burning debris near the distribution point in pre-dawn darkness as people shout and gunfire echoes — some of which were warning shots, according to unnamed witnesses quoted by the French news agency.
The Red Islamic Thingy said it happened after thousands of people gathered for the arrival of around 15 trucks of flour and other food, which were supposed to be handed out at Gaza City’s Kuwait roundabout, in the territory’s north. The roundabout has been the scene of several chaotic and deadly aid distribution incidents, including a deadly incident on March 23 that drew intense international scrutiny.
Eyewitnesses told AFP that Gazooks overseeing the aid delivery shot in the air, and that Israeli troops in the area also fired and some moving trucks hit people trying to get the food. The Israeli military told AFP it "has no record of the incident described."
In the al-Amal neighborhood of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the IDF said troops of the Givati Brigade killed several button men, including some who tried to attack them with bombs.
The Israeli Air Force carried out dozens of strikes across Gaza over the past day, mostly in al-Amal and al-Qarara, which the IDF said was to support the maneuvering ground troops.
The IAF also struck three tunnel shafts in an area from which a rocket was fired toward the border community of Kissufim on Friday, the IDF said.
Meanwhile,
...back at the abandoned silver mine, the water was up to Jack's neck and still rising. And then he smelled the smoke...
in central Gaza, the IDF said troops of the Nahal Brigade killed several terror operatives over the past day.
In one incident, the army said Nahal troops spotted a cell moving weaponry and called in a dronezap against them. Large secondary blasts were seen after the strike, according to the IDF. A fighter jet later struck the building the cell was seen leaving.
Two more Hamas cells were struck by drones in northern Gaza after being identified by the 215th Artillery Regiment. Fighter jets later also struck a building used by those operatives, the IDF adds.