Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said at an international press conference on Monday (9) that the Hamas terrorist group no longer functions as a military formation after 11 months of war since the October 7 massacre.
Despite the announcement, the country continues to fight a kind of guerrilla movement in the Gaza Strip, according to Gallant. “Hamas as a military formation no longer exists. Hamas is engaged in a guerrilla war and we are still fighting Hamas terrorists and seeking their leadership,” referring to Yahya Sinwar, who was named last month as the replacement for Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in an attack in Iran in July.
In the early hours of Tuesday (10), the Israeli Army confirmed an attack on the humanitarian zone of Khan Younis, in the south of the enclave, defining it as a “joint operation with the internal intelligence service – the Shin Bet – directed against important Hamas terrorists”, who operated from an investigated control center incorporated in the location.
In a later statement, Tel Aviv claimed to have killed three senior Hamas members in the bombing.
“Among the militants were Samer Ismail Jadr Abu Daqqa, leader of the Hamas air unit; in addition to him, terrorist Osama Tabesh, head of the Observation and Targeting Department of the Hamas Military Intelligence headquarters; and Ayman Mabhouh, another high-ranking terrorist of the Islamist organization,” an Israeli military statement said.
According to the military involved in the operation, all of them participated in the October 7 attacks, in which Palestinian terrorists from Gaza, under the leadership of Hamas, killed almost 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped another 251 – of whom 97 remain in the enclave, at least 30 of them already dead.
Hamas denied on Tuesday that there were members of the group in the Khan Younis humanitarian zone, however, this strategy of using civilians as human shields has been observed in Gaza since the beginning of the war, with the discovery of hiding places in schools, in a UN agency in the enclave and even in children’s bedrooms.
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