The Israeli navy mentioned on Thursday that it had apprehended lots of of individuals suspected of terrorism, together with wished Hamas operatives, throughout the Gaza Strip in a single day, and that many had surrendered and been transferred to Israel for additional questioning.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief navy spokesman, mentioned in a televised briefing that lots of the suspects below interrogation by the navy and the Shin Wager home safety company had turned themselves over to the Israeli forces.
“The intelligence we collect from the questioning aids us within the continued struggle,” he mentioned.
The bulletins of the surrenders and arrests got here quickly after images and movies surfaced on social media showing to indicate rows of males stripped to their underwear, sitting or kneeling on the bottom, with some certain and blindfolded.
The New York Occasions has not verified the pictures or the video. Admiral Hagari didn’t reply immediately when requested concerning the photographs, however reiterated the Israeli navy’s purpose of discovering and capturing Hamas operatives.
“They cover below the bottom and are available out and we battle them,” Admiral Hagari mentioned. Some, he added, “come out of tunnel shafts and others out of homes. We query and examine who amongst them is linked to Hamas and who isn’t. We detain all of them and interrogate them.”
One other navy spokesman, Maj. Nir Dinar, mentioned the navy had not launched the pictures and didn’t know when, or if, Israeli troopers had taken them.
The Israeli navy mentioned in a press release that troops had arrested lots of of individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism over the previous day, throughout fight in Shejaiya and Jabaliya, Hamas strongholds within the northern Gaza Strip, and Khan Younis, one other Hamas bastion within the south of the Palestinian enclave.
As well as, the navy mentioned, a military intelligence unit and the Shin Wager labored collectively on Thursday to arrest one other 150 terrorism suspects, together with Hamas operatives, from the realm of the Jabaliya refugee camp, and that they had been being questioned in Gaza. The navy had beforehand said that its human intelligence unit was working an interrogation facility inside Gaza.
Since starting its floor invasion of Gaza in late October, Israel has arrested lots of of Palestinians, amongst them the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, the strip’s largest medical facility. Israel has contended that Hamas was utilizing the hospital as a command-and-control heart, a declare Hamas and hospital officers deny. The navy has uncovered a stretch of tunnel operating below the hospital compound.
Admiral Hagari added that Israeli forces had been advancing on Thursday and intensifying the battle towards Hamas’s strongholds in northern and southern Gaza, killing senior commanders hiding in underground tunnels and destroying Hamas infrastructure.
The navy mentioned on Thursday that it had killed a senior Hamas operative in an airstrike a number of days in the past that hit Hamas’s central intelligence command heart. The operative, it mentioned, is Abdel Aziz Rantisi, from Hamas’ navy intelligence unit, who the navy mentioned had been chargeable for discipline intelligence within the strip and helped to plan the Oct. 7 assault in southern Israel.
Over the previous couple of days, the navy mentioned, its forces have been preventing in close-quarter fight, killing “dozens” of armed operatives, and have positioned and destroyed weapons and underground infrastructure, “predominantly positioned inside and within the neighborhood of civilian buildings,” in addition to rocket launchers and tunnel shafts, together with one inside a college in Shejaiya.
It was not potential to independently confirm Israel’s account of the preventing.
Additionally on Thursday, an anti-tank missile that was fired into northern Israel from Lebanese territory killed an Israeli civilian. Israel mentioned it had responded to that strike and extra launches from Lebanon with tank and artillery fireplace, and airstrikes towards targets together with what the navy described as a command-and-control heart of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group.