IDF probes leaked footage showing strikes on apparently unarmed men near Khan Younis
Army says it is checking graphic video aired by Al Jazeera, while noting that terror operatives in Gaza often fight and move around in civilian guise
The Israel Defense Forces said Friday it was probing leaked drone footage aired by Al Jazeera this week showing recent Israeli strikes on seemingly unarmed Palestinian men in the Khan Younis area.
The graphic high-quality footage showed several men struck by munitions while walking in open areas.
In response to a query by The Times of Israel, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said the footage was from an “active combat zone in Khan Younis, which had been significantly evacuated of the civilian population, and in which the troops experienced many encounters with terrorists who fought and moved [around] in civilian clothing, and disguised weapons in buildings and property that are believed to be civilian.”
It also said the footage had been handed over to the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism, an independent military body responsible for investigating unusual incidents amid the war, for further review.
The military has said that throughout the months-long war, it has regularly encountered terror operatives posing as civilians while moving from point to point, only arming themselves just prior to attacking Israeli forces. It has thus often used intelligence and extensive monitoring to identify and target operatives.
It was not immediately clear whether the men seen in the footage had been confirmed as combatants prior to being targeted.
Still, the incident had been filmed from a different device and published by the IDF in February, “obretix” — an account on the X social media site (formerly Twitter) dedicated to open-source intelligence-gathering — pointed out.
The February strike targeted a group of Hamas operatives, the IDF said at the time.
Warning: Graphic footage
Graphic scenes: An Israeli army drone pursued four civilian youths who attempted to reach their destroyed homes and killed them with missiles in Khan Younis at the start of last February. pic.twitter.com/6aQv5VLkdK
— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) March 21, 2024
The leaked drone footage aired by Al Jazeera of a strike on a group of seemingly unarmed Palestinian men in the Khan Younis area, was released by the IDF from a different angle in February. (h/t @obretix)
At the time, the IDF said it struck a group of Hamas operatives. https://t.co/I59eKy88m8 pic.twitter.com/4KX5WtX54E
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) March 23, 2024
It was unclear where Al Jazeera obtained the footage. The IDF did not respond to requests for comment on whether it was investigating the leak itself.
The IDF has been operating in Khan Younis for several months as part of the war against Hamas. The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacres, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, mostly civilians.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a wide-scale military campaign in Gaza, aiming to remove the terror group and return the hostages. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says some 32,000 people have been killed in fighting so far, a figure that cannot be independently verified, and includes some 13,000 Hamas terrorists Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 gunmen inside Israel on October 7.
