IDF names another 12 Hamas, Islamic Jihad terrorists killed in Gaza school strike
Statement brings number of confirmed terror operatives killed to 31; Hamas officials say 75 bodies out of at least 93 have been identified in Gaza following the airstrike
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The Israeli military and Shin Bet security agency said on Monday that they had verified the deaths of a total of 31 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives in Saturday’s airstrike on a school in Gaza City.
Hours after the strike, the IDF named 19 Palestinians it said were terror operatives killed in the attack against an “active” Hamas and Islamic Jihad command room, based out of a mosque in the al-Taba’een school complex, in Gaza City’s Daraj neighborhood.
On Monday, the IDF released the names and pictures of another 12 Palestinians it says were killed in the strike and were terror operatives.
At least 93 people were killed in the strike, according to Hamas authorities who say that 75 have been discovered as of Monday. The IDF expressed heavy skepticism over the claim, saying the numbers appeared to have been inflated.
According to the IDF, the strike was carried out using three “precision munitions” against the two terror groups’ command room embedded within a mosque at the Taba’een school complex.
The military said that footage from after the strike showed that there was no major damage to the surrounding school complex. It also said that the missiles “could not have caused the damage that corresponds to the casualty reports of the government media office in Gaza.”
In English-language remarks later Saturday, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that according to “various intelligence indications” there was a “high probability” that the commander of Islamic Jihad’s Central Camps Brigade, Ashraf Juda, was also at the school when it was struck. He said it was not yet clear if Juda was killed in the strike.
“Increasingly in recent months Hamas has focused on exploiting school buildings, often where civilians are sheltering inside, to use them as military facilities, command and control centers, for storing weapons, and to execute terrorist attacks,” Hagari said in a video statement.
“Over the last few weeks, our intelligence has been closely monitoring an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility, where approximately two dozen Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating,” Hagari continued. “After we received clear intelligence of the threat posed by these terrorists and in accordance with international humanitarian law, we took numerous steps to mitigate the risk to civilians, including using aerial surveillance prior to the strike and selecting very precise munitions to avoid civilian casualties.
“Early this morning, the IDF conducted a precision strike against the terrorists in one specific building of the compound. An area that, according to our intelligence, no women and children were present,” Hagari added.
Hagari also said that Hamas’s casualty count “does not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, and they do not match the information held by the IDF.”
It was unclear how many people were killed in all, and how many of the casualties were combatants.
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 said last week that it had struck Hamas command and control centers in schools in the Daraj and Tuffah neighborhoods. And on Monday, it said the commander of Hamas’s Sheikh Radwan Battalion was killed in an airstrike at another school in Gaza City.
“Since the beginning of this war, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations have been systematically abusing the civilian population and infrastructures in Gaza for their terrorist activities against the state of Israel,” Hagari said Saturday. “This includes Hamas’s massive network of underground tunnels which go under towns, hospitals, mosques, schools, and UN facilities, and are used by terrorists to command attacks, store weapons, and hold Israeli hostages captive.
“It also includes hospitals across the Gaza Strip, which have been repeatedly infiltrated and weaponized by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and where terrorists, tunnel shafts were found. Increasingly, in recent months, Hamas has focused on exploiting school buildings, often where civilians are sheltering inside, to use them as military facilities, command and control centers, for storing weapons, and to execute terror attacks.”
According to military assessments, Hamas operatives are struggling to remain inside tunnels as the long war drags on and are therefore increasingly moving to above-ground sites while hiding among innocents.
The war in Gaza has been ongoing since October 7 when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages. One hundred and eleven of the hostages are still held; the IDF has established that 39 of them are dead.
In response, Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza with the proclaimed objectives of dismantling Hamas and getting the hostages back.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 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 15,000 combatants in battle as of May and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack. 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 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 332.
AFP contributed to this report.
