The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday that more than 50 tunnels discovered along the Philadelphi Corridor, along the Egypt-Gaza border area, have been demolished by combat engineers over the past week.
The military did not detail how many of the tunnels crossed into Egypt. Tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor are believed to be used by Hamas for smuggling arms into the Strip.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari saod Thursday that the military has killed more than 17,000 terror operatives in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
He said in a press conference that the IDF’s “significant fighting” and achievements had harmed Hamas’s ability to regroup and recover. “We are determined to continue this,” he said.
In an update on Thursday morning, the military said dozens of gunmen had been killed over the past day and sites belonging to Hamas and other terror groups were destroyed in operations.
More than 30 Hamas sites, including booby-trapped buildings, tunnels, and weapon depots, were targeted in airstrikes across Gaza, according to the military.
The IDF said that in southern Gaza’s Rafah, troops killed more than 20 terror operatives by directing airstrikes.
Further north, in Khan Younis, troops with the 98th Division directed strikes against several Hamas operatives at a weapons depot. In another strike in Khan Younis, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative responsible for rocket launches was killed, the IDF said.
The IDF on Thursday issued a new evacuation order for Palestinians in the Khan Younis area in the southern Gaza Strip, following recent rocket attacks on Israel.
Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, published a list of the zones that needed to be evacuated.
The announcement called for Palestinians in the Khan Younis suburb of al-Qarara to evacuate to the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone.
Meanwhile, in the Netzarim Corridor of central Gaza, the IDF said that several cells of gunmen were killed, and a weapons depot was destroyed in strikes during operations over the past day.
On Thursday morning, one rocket was fired from Gaza at the border community of Kissufim. The IDF said the rocket struck an open area, causing no injuries.
Hamas propaganda image of hostage
Meanwhile the military wing of Hamas on Thursday said that a guard it claims shot dead a hostage under his charge in the Strip had acted out of vengeance and against the terror group’s protocols.
The Israel Defense Forces has not been able to confirm or deny the claims made by Hamas earlier this week that its guards shot dead a hostage and seriously wounded two other female captives.
Hudhaifa Kahlout — known by the nom de guerre Abu Obeida — the spokesman for the Al Qassam Brigades, provided an update on Hamas’s investigation into the alleged killing. He said in a series of messages on Telegram that the terror group’s investigation found that the guard “acted in revenge, contrary to instructions, after receiving news of the martyrdom of his two children in one of the enemy’s massacres.”
“We stress that the incident does not represent our ethics,” Abu Obeida said, adding that the protocols for guarding prisoners would be “tightened.”
It was the first time Hamas has acknowledged its guards killed hostages. The terror group has attributed previous deaths of hostages to Israeli strikes.
Israel has generally dismissed Hamas’s statements on the deaths of hostages as deplorable psychological warfare.
Alongside Abu Obeida’s statement, Hamas also published a propaganda image showing the body of an Israeli hostage, alongside the text “An unfortunate incident” and “Your brutality has become an imminent danger to your prisoners.” It was unclear whether Hamas was claiming the hostage in the photo was the one executed by the guard, or a separate case.
The IDF in a statement said that the remains of the hostage in the photo had been returned in a special operation last year. “This is a hostage who was murdered and his body was returned in an IDF and Shin Bet operation at the end of November,” the military said, adding that the family of the hostage had been updated by IDF representatives.
The hostage was later identified as Ofir Tzarfati, his mother confirmed in a statement issued by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Tzarfati, 27, was shot and wounded as he was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival on October 7. On November 27, the IDF declared that he was confirmed dead, and on December 1, the military announced it had recovered his body from Gaza and he was laid to rest in Kiryat Ata.
In the statement, Richelle Tzarfati said: “I am choosing not to look at the photo Hamas published and to remember Ofir as he was — a perfect, handsome, smiling, happy man, and not like Hamas decided to do today via deplorable psychological warfare.”
The terror group kidnapped 251 people during its thousands-strong rampage through southern Israel on October 7, which left nearly 1,200 people dead.
It is believed that 111 of the hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF. The terror group 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.
At the beginning of the war, Abu Obeida threatened to execute Israeli hostages and release footage of the killings.
Also on Thursday, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said the Palestinian death toll since the terror group launched its October 7 attack on Israel stood at 40,005.
The figure cannot be independently verified and includes more than 17,000 Hamas gunmen Israel says it has killed in battle as of August. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip walk past sewage flowing into the streets of the southern town of Khan Younis, July 4, 2024. ( Photo byJehad Alshrafi. )
Abu Obeida, spokesman of the Hamas military wing, speaks during a memorial in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on January 31, 2017. ( Photo by Said Khatib / File.)
