IDF says it has captured Hamas parliament, government seat and police HQ
Military says battles continue in Gaza City as humanitarian corridor, ‘tactical pauses’ help civilians flee; says it is sending 37 incubators to Strip; IDF ground op toll up to 46
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The IDF on Tuesday announced that it had captured a number of Hamas governmental sites in the heart of Gaza City as its troops engaged in fierce battles with Hamas gunmen in the city, while continuing to enable humanitarian corridors to allow for civilians to evacuate to the southern part of the Strip.
In Israel, rocket barrages fired by Gazan terrorists injured several people, including one person hospitalized in serious condition after shrapnel rained on part of Tel Aviv after an interception.
The death toll of IDF soldiers killed in the Gaza ground operation rose to 46, with the military clearing for publication the names of two soldiers killed on Monday.
The military said that troops of its 7th Armored Brigade and Golani Infantry Brigade captured several Hamas governmental sites in the Gaza City neighborhoods of Sheikh Ijlin and Rimal.
Among the locations captured by the troops were the Hamas parliament, the government complex, and the police headquarters.
Troops also captured the so-called governor’s house in Gaza, which housed Hamas offices for its military wing and police, offices of Hamas’s intelligence division, and other sites that were used to prepare for the October 7 onslaught, the army said.
Troops of the IDF’s Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion operating in the Gaza Strip found equipment taken by Hamas terrorists from their comrades during the October 7 onslaught.
The stolen equipment — and other Hamas weaponry — was found in the so-called governor’s house in Gaza,… pic.twitter.com/pS4SdoeM9e
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) November 14, 2023
At the governor’s house, soldiers from the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion found equipment taken by Hamas terrorists from their comrades during the October 7 onslaught and other weaponry.
The 13th Battalion took a major part in the fighting on October 7, losing at least 41 members during the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
The IDF said the equipment would be brought back to Israel and examined by officials.
The military charged that a university engineering building raided by troops “served as an institute for the production and development of weapons,” and said soldiers also captured a Hamas compound with a training base, command center, interrogation rooms, and detention cells.
A photo circulated on social media Tuesday morning showed troops of the IDF’s Golani Brigade inside Hamas’s military police headquarters in the Gaza Strip, after capturing the site. The soldiers could be seen holding an Israeli flag and a flag of Golani’s 13th Battalion. It is unclear when the photo was taken.
On Monday, a similar photo emerged showing Golani Brigade troops inside Gaza’s parliament building.
Just north of the city center, the IDF’s 162nd Division completed its takeover of the coastal al-Shati refugee camp, a warren of homes and shanties home to an estimated 150,000 people who fled ahead of the Israeli offensive.
Troops battled some 200 Hamas terrorists in at least four separate clashes in the camp over the several hours Tuesday completing the capture of the area, the IDF said.
The army called the neighborhood a main Hamas stronghold, and home base of a Hamas cell that took part in the October 7 massacres. “Inside the camp, there is a lot of enemy infrastructure and many forces of Hamas were concentrated there,” the army said.
Al Shati is just west of Rimal, an upscale Gaza neighborhood thought home to many Hamas leaders, and just a few blocks from Shifa Hospital, which Israel charges is hiding a Hamas headquarters.
The 162nd Division had pushed south from northern Gaza when the ground operation began two and a half weeks ago, heading into Gaza City, and facing resistance in the al-Shati camp in the last few days.
There were at least four clashes with Hamas operatives in al-Shati in the last few hours. According to the military, nearly every other home in the camp was booby-trapped.
Around 150,000 to 200,000 Palestinians are estimated to have fled the camp as Israeli troops entered. The troops of the division battled around 200 Hamas operatives in al-Shati.
The military believes it has full control of al-Shati, though there could still be incidents. It says Hamas’s command and control systems in the area were completely dismantled during the raids.
Early Tuesday morning, the IDF confirmed that another two soldiers were killed fighting against Hamas terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip, raising the death toll in the Israeli ground operation to 46.
The troops were named as Staff Sgt. Roee Marom, 21, from Ra’anana, a squad commander in the 906 Battalion; and Master Sgt. Raz Abulafia, 27, from Rishpon, a fighter in the 6863 Battalion.
The IDF added that a reservist logistics soldier and an NCO in the Combat Engineering Corp’s 605th Battalion were seriously wounded during fighting in northern Gaza.
The IDF also officially confirmed the death of Cpl. Noa Marciano, 19, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 and died in captivity in Gaza.
The IDF said Tuesday that it was seeking to deliver incubators to hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including the Shifa Hospital. It was not immediately clear how such a transfer would take place and whether purported fuel shortages would allow the Israeli incubators to be used if the hospital’s original ones were out of action.
The military shared on Tuesday a recording of a conversation between an IDF liaison officer and the director of the Shifa Hospital regarding the transfer of 37 incubators along with four breathing machines and other critical medical equipment.
On Sunday, the IDF said it had supplied 300 liters of fuel to Shifa Hospital, in coordination with its staff, but that Hamas had prevented the embattled medical center from accepting it.
Fighting in recent days has centered around Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, which Jerusalem says is hiding Hamas’s main operations center in an underground bunker. The IDF has repeatedly denied that Israel has surrounded or besieged the medical center, saying that one entrance remains open and that it is working in conjunction with staff to allow for the safe passage of patients and civilians.
The focus on Shifa and other hospitals, which have complained of dwindling supplies and patient deaths due to the fighting, has ratcheted up pressure on Israel to do more to protect Gazan civilians caught in the crossfire. US and European officials have called on Israel to protect the medical complex, as the IDF continues to produce evidence showing that Hamas operates within and underneath hospitals as a matter of policy.
Rocket fire from Gaza continued on Tuesday, with two people lightly hurt in Ashkelon following a rocket strike, and cars and buildings damaged. Earlier in the day air raid sirens sounded in the largely evacuated Gaza border towns of Nirim and Kissufim following rockets fired by terror groups.
The IDF meanwhile said that it would once again on Tuesday implement a humanitarian pause in fighting in some of the northern Gaza Strip to enable Palestinians to evacuate toward the south.
The IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, wrote on X that Salah a-Din road will be open for southbound movement for seven hours on Tuesday, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. The coastal road in northern Gaza will also be open for movement between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., in order for civilians to reach Salah a-Din.
Additionally, Adraee said, the IDF will make “tactical pauses in military activities” in the Gaza City neighborhoods of Daraj and Tuffah between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., so that Palestinians can reach the humanitarian corridor to evacuate south.
The UN huminatarian office said Tuesday that 200,000 people have fled south in Gaza over the past 10 days, as Israel has been encouraging them to do for the past month. More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began, the UN estimates.
Also Tuesday, the IDF said its ground forces operating in the Strip found infrastructure inside a mosque.
Troops of the Harel Reserve Brigade’s reconnaissance unit and Givati Brigade’s reserve reconnaissance unit found a Hamas tunnel shaft inside the mosque, the IDF said.
The IDF said that overnight, soldiers directed fighter jets and combat helicopters to strike anti-tank missile squads that were firing at troops.
The IAF has struck some 200 targets over the past day, the military said Tuesday morning, including terror operatives, weapon production sites, anti-tank missile launch positions, and Hamas command centers.
The Navy has also carried out strikes, hitting a Hamas naval forces camp on the coast, which the IDF said was used for training and as a weapons depot.
Israel launched its war against Hamas in Gaza after the terror group stormed across the border on October 7 carried out a surprise onslaught against southern Israel, rampaging through communities near the Strip as it fired thousands of rockets. An estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attack, down from an earlier assessment of 1,400 people, as officials have worked diligently for five weeks to locate and identify remains.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claimed Tuesday that 11,240 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, in figures that cannot be independently verified, do not distinguish between civilians and terror operatives and also include those killed in failed Palestinian rocket launches.
According to IDF data released on November 9, some 12% of rockets fired from within the Gaza Strip by Hamas — hundreds of launches — have fallen short inside the enclave.
Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
