(JNS) Israeli forces over the past 24 hours took control of another Hamas “military” compound in the northern Gaza Strip, according to a statement released by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on Tuesday.
IDF soldiers said they found anti-tank missiles and launchers, weapons and various intelligence material at the site.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces directed an airstrike on a group of terrorists that had barricaded themselves in a building adjacent to the al-Quds Hospital in Gaza’s Tel al-Hawa area.
The IDF said that the strike led to “significant secondary explosions” that indicated the presence of a Hamas weapons depot.
Israel accuses Hamas of placing its terrorist infrastructure in and launching attacks from civilian sites such as hospitals, schools, houses of worship and United Nations buildings.
The army has provided visual evidence of terror tunnels and rocket-launching positions in or around such sites.
Also in the past day, IDF fighter jets struck a 10-man terror cell under the guidance of ground forces, as well as an anti-tank missile cell operating in their vicinity.
It comes as Israel doubled down on its position that it is trying hard to minimise harm to Gaza's civilians on Monday, as Hamas grabbed headlines by claiming that 10,000 Gazans are now dead from the war. Israel is urging the world not to trust Hamas' calculations.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News last night that he considers every civilian loss is a “tragedy,” and said that Israel is doing "everything in our power" to minimise civilian populations.
But he feared that a significant humanitarian pause — the likes of which the US is advocating — could be exploited by Hamas.
He predicted that Israel will have “overall security responsibility" over Gaza for an "indefinite period” after the war, suggesting this is necessary because when Jerusalem eases security control it gets an “eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.”
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