The Israeli Army announced this Monday (17) that it had eliminated more than 500 terrorists from the Islamic group Hamas in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, where a military operation began in early May.
As a result of the attacks, two of the four Hamas battalions in the city have been virtually dismantled, while the remaining two are “at low operational levels,” according to the Israeli Armed Forces.
During their operations in the south of the enclave, soldiers destroyed “dozens of tunnel mouths and two tunnels more than a kilometer long”, in addition to identifying 230 tunnel mouths and around 20 kilometers of underground passages, the Army detailed in an announcement.
Many of these tunnel mouths were located in the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, which runs along the border with Egypt and was seized by Israeli forces in late May.
According to Israel, Hamas used these entrances to transport weapons to Gaza.
According to reports this Monday in the Israeli media, the military estimates that within two weeks they will have control of all of Rafah, from where more than a million civilians have fled, the majority already displaced by fighting in other parts of the Strip.
The Israeli military operation in the south of the enclave also caused the closure of the border crossing into Egypt, through which much of the humanitarian aid passed.
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