The Israeli Defense Force in a Gaza Strip: Reports of Hamas Attacks in the Fourth epoch of war in the Gaza Strip
There is no safe place for 1.9 million people who were displaced since the war began in Gaza, and rocket-fire claims add to the concerns.
Israeli commanders think they have killed many Hamas fighters since the war began. Israeli officials said those estimates were based in part on the assumption that between 200 and 250 Hamas fighters had been killed if Israeli troops said they wiped out a Hamas battalion, and that if a commander was targeted and killed, a team of five or six people had died with him. Confirmation that a commander had been killed could take days to arrive, so the estimate was an “evolving reality.”
The United States Secretary of Defense gave a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum last week warning that Israel could lose its strategic advantage if it doesn’t protect Palestinians in Gaza.
“If you drive the civilian population into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat, and that’s the center of gravity,” Austin said.
According to the military, the rocket fire was further evidence that the people of Gaza are being used by Hamas for acts of terror.
The use of a wide range of fire is necessary to protect our forces and damage the enemy. That is why they operate powerfully” while still going to “great efforts to minimize harm” to civilians, Halevi said.
“Clearing operations take a very long time,” Carter said. “In areas they have already cleared they still have to conduct military operations as Hamas fighters attack their positions in these cleared areas.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ministers of his war cabinet met with some hostages released in a brief cease-fire last month after being held for weeks in Gaza by Hamas.
The former hostages were angry with the officials over the reports of Israel planning to flood the Hamas tunnels.
Scott Neuman and Eleanor Beardsley were in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Brian Mann was in the West Bank. The NPR producer was in the Gaza Strip.
The Israel Defense Force said on Wednesday that it had hit 250 targets in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours and that ground troops continued to locate and destroy weapons.
It was the first time that Israel admitted that ground forces were engaged in the area. The soldiers were seen in the video in the northern part of Gaza.
He said the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday were taking part “in the most intense day since the beginning of the ground operation, in terms of terrorists killed, the number of firefights, and the use of firepower from the land and air.”
The head of Israel’s Southern Command told reporters that they are in the heart of the Khan Younis area. Jabaliya, the site of a major refugee camp, and Shujaiya, are located in Gaza’s north. Khan Younis, considered a Hamas stronghold, is located toward the south end of the Strip.
The Palestinian city of Khan Younis is bracing for some of the heaviest fighting since Israel launched its air-and-ground assault on Gaza more than two months ago.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Israeli military also said that the northern brigade, Hamas’s second largest, had been “significantly damaged.” The army claimed it had inflicted serious damage to the Gaza City brigade.
Among those in the photo the army said it had eliminated were the head of Hamas’s aerial division, two battalion commanders, a brigade commander and a deputy brigade commander.
An Israeli soldier killed in the act: a photo of Sinwar and Abu Anas as a Hamas battalion commanders in Beit Lahia
Mr. Netanyahu said in a video posted on the X platform that forces were encircling Sinwar’s house. He can escape, but it is only a matter of time until we reach him.”
Even if Israel manages to kill the group’s current leaders, there is no guarantee that Israel will accomplish its stated goal of eliminating Hamas and removing it from power.
Israeli forces are trying to find and kill top Hamas leaders in southern Gaza. That group includes Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, the head of the Qassam armed wing.
The military wing of Hamas confirmed last month that three of the men in the picture had been killed, including the northern Gaza military leader known as Abu Anas. Another was a Hamas battalion commander. A spokesman for the Israeli military said in November they had attacked the underground site where Mr. al-Ghandour was hiding.
The rare photo of the Hamas leaders, the Israeli military said, was taken while the group hid in a tunnel underneath a residential neighborhood near the Indonesian hospital in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahia.
He said Israel had killed about half of Hamas’s battalion commanders. But he did not provide the names and details of all of those killed.
An Israeli intelligence unit analyzed the picture after it was seized in Gaza but did not reveal who initially took the photograph. The exact date and location of the picture could not be independently verified.
Israeli pressurises U.N. to investigate charges of sexual violence by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7: U.S. Secretary-General António Guterres
One of the reasons they do not want to give women hostages is because they don’t want women to talk about what happened to them while in custody.
And in a Wednesday letter to the U.N. Security Council about the dangers faced by civilians in Gaza, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the Oct. 7 allegations. He wrote that the reports of sexual violence during the attacks are appalling.
“Atrocious forms of sexual violence need to be thoroughly investigated. We need to make sure that justice is served because that’s what we owe the victims,” Türk said.
Israel has been accusing major international groups of being slow to condemn sexual violence which Hamas has denied.
The ambassador of Israel to the United Nations said that the decisions to decapitate and eat Israeli women were not merely sick. It was premeditated. This was planned all along. This was instructed.”
“Many young women arrived in bloody, shredded rags, or just in underwear, and their underwear was often very bloody,” Mendes recalled. A leader of her unit “saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or shot in the breast” in what “seemed to be a systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims,” Mendes added.
The staff at the base where the bodies of the victims were taken for identification were shocked by how cruel and terrible it was.
Israel says that there is credible evidence of sexual violence on October 7, including witness accounts of militants raping women; bodies of women with their clothes removed; and others shot through the head and breast.
The apocalypse of corpses: Israel’s response to the Nova rave at the U.N. and Gaza’s former attorney general
A survivor from the Nova rave, a music festival where hundreds of young people were killed, told responders that “everything was an apocalypse of corpses,” with dead women who were missing clothes, Reichert said.
First responders who responded to the attacks as well as survivors testified to Yael Reichert, a top police officer in Israel.
“I’m standing in front of you to make sure that you hear the voices of those women that cannot stand next to us now and be here to scream out what happened to them,” Greiniman said.
She was not wearing clothes. She had nails and different objects in her female organs,” he said, visibly emotional and hesitating between words. She was abused in a way that we could not comprehend.
Simcha Greiniman is a volunteer rescue worker who helped collect bodies on October 7.
At the U.N. on Monday, testimony from three Israelis — a police officer, a first responder and a member of a morgue team that processed bodies — described and listed details of Israel’s case.
The pressure was put on the United Nations after a remarkable session on Monday that included firsthand accounts of Israeli responders injuries they saw on the bodies of victims.
Israeli officials say they have information showing that Hamas fighters committed rape during the attacks on Israel in October that killed more than 1,200 Israelis.
Israel’s former attorney general, Avihai Mandelblit, says he thinks Israel’s intention is to ensure civilians escape harm’s way, despite the humanitarian crisis associated with urging mass evacuations to Gaza’s south.
“I’m not saying it is nice being there, but the only thing that we try to do is to protect their lives. If they’re going to stay in Khan Younis in such an intensity of combat, then lots of civilian lives will be lost. The most crucial thing is that they won’t die. ,” Mandelblit said, referring to Gaza’s second-largest city where Israel’s bombardment is focused now.
The Israeli military issued a statement last week saying it was providing information to residents of the Gaza Strip about their safety in the next stage of the war.
The territory of the Gaza Strip is divided by this. according to recognizable areas to enable the residents of Gaza to orient themselves and understand the instructions, and to evacuate from specific places for their safety, if required,” the statement said.
The map was created as a result of Biden’s instructions to Israel to minimize civilian casualties. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Israel to establish safe zones after visiting Israel and the West Bank.
Many residents in Gaza have little electricity or internet service, making it difficult to access the map. The Israeli military and other people living in the zone that are identified on the map have different opinions on whether or not to evacuate.
“My house was in zone 55. The last zone on the evacuation list was 54,” 29-year-old Heba Usrof told NPR. Heavy fighting is happening at Khan Younis, where she is from.
She says that they hit again the next day. An Israeli soldier contacted a neighbor and told him to leave.
Israeli military Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee has been posting information — along with videos aimed at persuading Palestinian viewers that Hamas was responsible for their suffering in the war — on X and Facebook since the war began, instructing civilians to flee.
He warned on Tuesday of the main north-south road being a combat zone, because the military was operating in the Khan Younis area. He said that Israeli forces would be out of harms way until 2 p.m.
Adraee’s first announcement declaring a safe passage out of northern Gaza in early November was followed by another announcement the following day: The safe passage was rendered unsafe by Hamas gunfire, he said.
He fled from northern Gaza to Khan Younis with his family 20 days ago in order to avoid being retaliated by Hamas, and then he fled from Khan Youns to the border with Egypt on Tuesday.
“The Israelis told us to go south. We came here and found no place to go. He toldNPR that all of them were in the streets. Hamas should have secured the people before doing this. They need to secured the people and have a place for them.
In the coming hours, the Israel Defense Forces shall commence a strong attack on your location of residence with the goal of destroying the Hamas terrorist organization.
In the past few days, cellphones in the city flashed with messages on their screens telling people to leave Khan Younis, as a ” dangerous battle” was expected.
internet and cellphone service in Gaza have been out since October 7. Israel, which maintains a blockade on Gaza, has declined to answer NPR’s request for comment on whether these communications cuts are deliberate.
The residents are confused by the calls. NPR spoke to several people who received calls from the Israeli military listing zones to evacuate that weren’t their neighborhood.
The U.S. demanded Israel declare safe zones to minimize civilian casualties from Israeli airstrikes in response to the surprise Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials. Palestinians and aid groups say that the zones are not good enough to provide a safehaven for residents who escape.
They are being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas — as Israel urges Palestinians to escape its air-and-ground campaign, which has left more than 16,000 dead in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.
There was a video released by Israel which appears to show a rocket launching position near a group of civilians in a tent city near the Egyptian border. It is 270 yards from the biggest base in Gaza used by the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees.
There is a video that does not show rockets being fired but that displays the launch site before and after reported launches. The New York Times could not confirm the claim that rockets had been fired.
The Israeli military posted maps, satellite photos and a video that it said showed 14 rockets had been fired toward Israel from several locations, including Al-Mawasi, a barren area where, aid groups said, thousands of people were sheltering in rickety tents made of wood and plastic, with little food, medicine and water.