IDF strikes Hamas command center in Nuseirat school-turned-shelter, announces earlier killings of Hamas operatives who participated in Oct. 7, guarded hostage Noa Marciano
11 September 2024, 10:32 pm
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday revealed a document he said was written by the former commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade in southern Gaza, Rafa’a Salameh, and addressed to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his brother Muhammad, in which the commander described the “difficult situation” in which the terror group had found itself.
Salameh, a mastermind of the terror group’s October 7 massacre, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza in July that also killed senior Hamas commander Muhammad Deif.
In the letter, he wrote: “Please consider the following: We maintain the remaining weapons and equipment, as we have lost 90-95 percent of our rocket capabilities; and we have lost some 60% of our personal weapons; we have lost at least 65-70% of our anti-tank launchers and rockets,” according to excerpts provided and translated by the Defense Ministry.
“Most importantly,” he continued, “we have lost at least 50% of our fighters between those who are martyred and wounded, and now we are left with 25%. The last 25% of our people have reached a situation where the people do not tolerate them anymore, broken on a mental or physical level.”
Gallant said the document showed “a real hardship that affects Hamas and affects the most senior commanders.”
“Why? Because we are continuing the effort that started in October and continues step by step… and reaches all senior Hamas officials. He wrote this to the Sinwar brothers, we will get to them as well,” the defense minister continued.
Yahya Sinwar is the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and is considered a mastermind of the group’s October 7, 2023 attack, when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war.
Sinwar was last month appointed as the head of the terror group following the July 31 assassination of previous leader Ismail Haniyeh. His brother Muhammad is a senior commander in Hamas’s military wing.
Gallant’s presentation of the document came on the same day as two Israeli soldiers were killed and several others wounded in a helicopter crash attempting to extract a third, seriously wounded soldier from the battlefield. The crash was not a result of enemy fire.
Gallant also published a video on social media Wednesday from the same facility, showing a photo of Muhammad Sinwar’s children posing in front of a depiction of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in the United States.
The photo was discovered recently in a tunnel underneath Khan Younis, Gallant said in the video, which was posted on the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike Wednesday in central Gaza struck a group of Hamas operatives at a command room embedded within a former school.
According to the military, Hamas was using the Al-Jaouni School in Nuseirat to plan and carry out attacks against troops and Israel. The school has been serving as a shelter for displaced Gazans.
Hospital officials reported 14 people killed, including two children, in the strike.
The IDF said it carried out “many steps,” including using precision munitions, aerial surveillance and other intelligence, to limit civilian casualties in the strike.
“The Hamas terror organization systematically violates international law, brutally exploiting civilian institutions and the population as a human shield for terror activity,” the military said.
In recent months, dozens of airstrikes have been carried out against Hamas sites embedded within schools and other sites used as shelters for civilians, according to the IDF.
The IDF also announced on Wednesday that recent airstrikes in Gaza had killed two Hamas terrorists who participated in the October 7 onslaught, one of whom was involved in guarding Cpl. Noa Marciano, an abducted soldier who was killed by Hamas at Shifa Hospital and whose body was recovered in November.
A separate drone strike recently killed Ayman Khaled Ahmed Abu al-Yahni, who the IDF said was a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force and was involved in attacking the Erez Crossing during the October 7 onslaught, the military announced.
Rocket sirens sounded in Israeli communities along the Gaza border on Wednesday, but the IDF later announced they were false alarms.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 344.
Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Content retrieved from: https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-reveals-document-from-top-hamas-commander-warning-sinwar-of-dire-losses/.