(Times of Israel) Emanuel Fabian - The IDF and Israel Security Agency on Saturday night named 19 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror operatives killed in an airstrike on a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command room embedded within a mosque at the Taba'een school in Gaza City. The IDF said the strike was carried out using three "precision munitions" and that footage after the strike showed that there was no major damage to the surrounding school complex. It also said that the missiles "could not have caused the damage that corresponds to the casualty reports of the government media office in Gaza." IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said, "Increasingly in recent months Hamas has focused on exploiting school buildings, often where civilians are sheltering inside, to use them as military facilities, command and control centers, for storing weapons, and to execute terrorist attacks." "Over the last few weeks, our intelligence has been closely monitoring an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility, where approximately two dozen Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating. After we received clear intelligence of the threat posed by these terrorists and in accordance with international humanitarian law, we took numerous steps to mitigate the risk to civilians, including using aerial surveillance prior to the strike and selecting very precise munitions to avoid civilian casualties....Early this morning, the IDF conducted a precision strike against the terrorists in one specific building of the compound - an area that, according to our intelligence, no women and children were present." According to military assessments, Hamas operatives are struggling to remain inside tunnels and are increasingly moving to above-ground sites, while hiding among innocents.
2024-08-11 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive