Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip: Israeli attacks on Hamas and the israeli-Israeli embassy in Gaza, as reported by UNRWA
UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency that aids Palestinians, issued yet another in a long series of dire warnings in recent days. It warned of “[another] wave of displacement” in Gaza.
According to commanders, Israeli military have killed thousands of 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, so the estimate was an “evolving reality,” officials said.
In a speech last week, the Secretary of Defense warned that if Israel did not protect the Palestinians in Gaza, it could end up losing the war.
“The center of gravity is the civilian population and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” Austin said.
Netanyahu met the families of Israeli hostages in Gaza on Tuesday and said the Hamas organization was trying to tear the country apart. Mr. Netanyahu’s government is under pressure over whether to continue to pummel Hamas or broker another truce that would allow for more exchanges.
Palestinian heaviest fighting since Israel’s air-and-ground assault on Gaza: An Israeli Defense Force report on Tuesday in Khan Younis
It requires the use of a wide range of fire, both to protect our forces and to damage the enemy. That is why they operate powerfully” while still going to “great efforts to minimize harm” to civilians, Halevi said.
Speaking to NPR, Brian Carter, an analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based Critical Threats Project, which has been tracking the urban fighting in Gaza, tells NPR that Israeli forces have not been making fast progress on the ground.
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.
One of the former hostages berated officials over reports that Israel was considering flooding the Hamas tunnels where they have held many captives.
Brian Mann’s report was from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. NPR producer Anas Baba contributed from Rafah, in the Gaza Strip.
In a post on X, the IDF said that their air force hit 250 targets in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours and that ground troops continue to locate and destroy terrorist infrastructures.
It was the first time that Israel acknowledged that ground forces had been engaged in the area. Israel released video it said showed soldiers operating in northern 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.”
At one point Mr. Sinwar and Mr. Deif were thought to be in the city of Khan Younis where the army and Hamas are engaged in heated urban combat.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Some of the heaviest fighting since the start of Israel’s air-and-ground assault on Gaza more than two months ago was taking place Wednesday in Khan Younis, with artillery shelling and gunfire echoing through the Palestinian territory’s second-largest city.
The northern brigade, the second largest in Hamas, was damaged, the Israeli military said on Tuesday. The Israeli military also claimed it had inflicted serious damage to battalions from the Gaza City Brigade.
The Israeli army said that five of the 11 commanders gathered by them had been killed on Tuesday, but released an annotated photo of senior Hamas military leaders.
Netanyahu’s enclave as a leader of the Hamas terror group: a photo of Sinwar and Abu Rakba
Mr. Netanyahu posted a video on the X platform, in which he said that his forces were surrounding Sinwar’s house. He can escape, but it is only a matter of time until we reach him.”
If Israel is able to kill the leaders of Hamas, there is no guarantee that they will be able to eradicate the group from power.
Israeli forces have in recent day advanced into southern Gaza in an attempt to find and kill top Hamas leaders believed to be hiding there. That group includes Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, the head of the Qassam armed wing.
Two other men in the picture that Israel said it had killed were accused of taking part in the planning of the Oct. 7 attacks. Asem Abu Rakba oversaw the Hamas drone program. The military made a statement.
The leaders in the photo are seated at a table with a lot of fruit, drinks and food. Beneath the enclave are hundreds of tunnels Hamas has constructed to hide and transport weapons, fighters and materiel.
He said that Israel has killed 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 and didn’t know who took it. The exact location and date of the photograph cannot be independently verified.