Jerusalem, Dec 24 (EFE).- The Israeli army said Sunday that in the last 24 hours it had attacked more than 200 targets of the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including a weapons warehouse inside a civilian compound, and also taken down several militiamen.
Israeli security forces – involving both the army and the internal intelligence service, Shin Bet – reported that they had arrested more than 200 “terrorists”, both from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the last week and that these total almost 800 since the beginning of the war.
Explosive belts tweaked for children, dozens of mortar shells, hundreds of grenades and intelligence documents were found inside the civilian complex, which was located adjacent to schools, a mosque and a medical clinic, according to a military spokesperson.
He added the weapons warehouse was found in an unspecified location in the north of the Palestinian enclave.
The army said in a statement that during this operation, troops identified “several terrorists” who left a Hamas military complex used, among other things, as an observation center.
The forces directed an airstrike at the complex and the terrorists were killed, it added.
In another operation in Jabalia, also in the north, air and artillery troops killed seven other Hamas militants and destroyed four observation points.
Moreover, in a raid on the military command center in Khan Younis, a Hamas stronghold in the southern Gaza Strip, soldiers located numerous weapons, including dozens of grenades and explosives.
On the other hand, 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip in the past 48 hours, since the ground offensive began in the enclave, where fighting has intensified in the past week.
In total, 152 Israeli soldiers have died in combat in the enclave since the start of the ground offensive on Oct. 7, surpassing the 119 who died in the 2006 Lebanon war, according to army figures.
The offensives have caused more than 20,200 deaths in the Gaza Strip – more than 70 percent of them civilians including more than 8,000 children – and 56,000 wounded, the largest toll of casualties that any other conflict in Palestinian territory, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health. EFE
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