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The Israeli navy has launched a photograph of 11 senior Hamas navy leaders gathered in a tunnel beneath Gaza and stated that 5 of them had been killed.
Amongst these within the annotated photograph the military stated it had eradicated had been the pinnacle of Hamas’s aerial division, two battalion commanders, a brigade commander and a deputy brigade commander.
The uncommon photograph of the Hamas leaders launched on Tuesday, the Israeli navy stated, was taken whereas the group hid in a tunnel beneath a residential neighborhood close to the Indonesian hospital within the northern Gaza metropolis of Beit Lahia.
An Israeli intelligence unit analyzed the image after it was seized in Gaza however didn’t reveal who took it. A number of the {photograph}’s particulars, together with its precise date and site, couldn’t be instantly independently verified.
Israeli forces have focused the Hamas management for the reason that group launched an assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israeli historical past.
Since then, Israel has declared warfare on Hamas with the intent of destroying the group. It has positioned Gaza, which the group has managed since 2007, below siege, slicing civilians off from common provides of meals and gasoline, and subjected the strip to a lethal bombing marketing campaign.
“Hamas needed to tear us aside; we’re tearing it aside,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Tuesday, after assembly with the households of Israeli hostages nonetheless held in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu’s authorities is below stress over whether or not to proceed to pummel Hamas or dealer one other truce that might enable for extra exchanges.
Israel, he stated, in a nod to the present technique, had killed “about half of Hamas’s battalion commanders.” However he didn’t present the names and particulars of all of these killed.
The leaders within the photograph are seen sitting at an extended, low desk festooned with fruit, drinks and different meals. Beneath the enclave are a whole bunch of tunnels Hamas has constructed to cover and transport weapons, fighters and materiel.
The navy wing of Hamas, Al-Qassam, confirmed final month that at the least three of the lads within the image had been killed, together with Ahmed al-Ghandour, the northern Gaza navy chief generally known as Abu Anas, and his deputy, Wael Rajab. One other was Rafet Salman, a Hamas battalion commander. In November, a spokesman for the Israeli navy stated its forces had attacked an underground website the place Mr. al-Ghandour had been hiding.
Two different males within the image that Israel stated it had killed had been accused of participating within the planning of the Oct. 7 assaults. One, Asem Abu Rakba, oversaw Hamas’s drone program, the navy stated.
The killings are a setback for Hamas amid a strong Israeli invasion that has leveled elements of northern Gaza, displaced what the United Nations says is greater than 90 p.c of the inhabitants and killed greater than 15,500 individuals, in accordance with the Gazan well being ministry.
Israeli navy commanders this week estimated they’d killed a number of thousand Hamas fighters for the reason that warfare started. Israeli officers stated these estimates had been based mostly partially on the belief that between 200 and 250 Hamas fighters had been killed if Israeli troops stated they worn out a Hamas battalion, and that if a commander was focused and killed, a workforce of 5 – 6 individuals had died with him. Affirmation {that a} commander had been killed may take days to reach, officers stated, so the estimate was an “evolving actuality.”
About 400 Israeli troopers have died in preventing since Oct. 7, in accordance with the Israeli navy.
Israeli forces have in current day superior into southern Gaza in an try to seek out and kill high Hamas leaders believed to be hiding there. That group contains Yahya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, the pinnacle of the Qassam armed wing.
At one level, Mr. Sinwar and Mr. Deif had been considered in Khan Younis, the most important metropolis in southern Gaza, the place the military and Hamas fighters are engaged in heated city fight.
On Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu stated in a video posted on the X platform: “Our forces are encircling Sinwar’s home. He can escape, however it is just a matter of time till we attain him.”
Even when Israel manages to kill the group’s present leaders, there isn’t any assure that Israel will accomplish its said aim of eliminating Hamas and eradicating it from energy.
The U.S. has fought wars in opposition to the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, badly battering each terror teams however not destroying both.
The Israeli navy didn’t say why it determined to launch the annotated photograph.
In an announcement on Tuesday, the Israeli navy additionally stated that the northern brigade, Hamas’s second largest, had been “considerably broken.” The Israeli navy additionally claimed it had inflicted critical injury to battalions from the Gaza Metropolis Brigade.
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