IDF strikes targeting Hamas fighters trying to loot aid reportedly kill 13
Military says strikes intended to allow aid convoy to reach civilians; IDF also orders evacuation of Gaza City neighborhood after Hamas launched rockets from there on Wednesday
The Israel Defense Forces said it carried out strikes on two groups of terrorists trying to loot humanitarian aid in Gaza on Thursday morning. Hamas officials said 13 people were killed in the strikes.
“All of the terrorists who were eliminated were Hamas terrorists who planned to violently take control of humanitarian aid trucks and transfer them to the Hamas terrorist organization,” the IDF said in a statement. “The strike was intended to allow the humanitarian aid to reach the residents of the Gaza Strip safely.”
“We emphasize that the IDF did not attack humanitarian aid trucks and that the aid truck transit route remained open and active,” the military said.
The statement said the Hamas members aimed to hijack the aid “in support of continuing terrorist activity.”
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said that 13 Palestinians were killed in the pair of airstrikes. The 13 were among the 58 Palestinians that the ministry reported were killed in Israeli strikes across the Strip on Thursday, a dozen of whom it described as guards securing aid trucks.
The Hamas figures cannot be verified and do not differentiate between terror operatives and civilians.
According to a report in Reuters, citing sources close to Hamas, “many of those killed” in the strikes had links to the terror group.
Also on Thursday, the IDF and Shin Bet announced that, earlier this week, an airstrike in Gaza eliminated a top commander in Hamas’s weapons manufacturing division.
According to the military, the strike against a Hamas commander center embedded within the al-Hurriya school in Gaza City, killed the commander, Ammar Daloul, and several other operatives including one who participated in the October 7 onslaught.
Daloul served as a department head in Hamas’s manufacturing division and a company commander in the terror group’s Zeitoun Battalion, according to the IDF.
The military said the strike also killed Hamas terrorists Jihad Yassin, a company commander in the Zeitoun Battalion; Yahya Masoud Muhammad Ashqar, who infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in the October 7 massacre; Kamal Saber Salim Arafat; Muhammad Akram Aaraj; Loay Farid Faiz Hussein Ali, a platoon commander; Imad Aouni Ibrahim Rayan; and Raed Samir Masoud Harazayn, a member of Hamas’s internal security forces.
Before carrying out the strike, the IDF said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm.
#عاجل ‼️ الى سكان قطاع غزة المتواجدين في بلوكات: 703, 690, 783, 688, 784, 687 (منطقة الرمال – الصبرة) ????هذا تخدير مسبق قبل هجوم!
⭕️تطلق المنظمات الإرهابية القذائف الصاروخية مرة اخرى من هذه المنطقة. لقد تم تحذير هذه المنطقة المحددة عدة مرات في الماضي
⭕️من أجل أمنكم، انتقلوا… pic.twitter.com/fGHgPfpRk4
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) December 12, 2024
Later on Thursday, the IDF issued an evacuation warning to several neighborhoods in Gaza City, following rocket fire from the area at Israeli troops operating in the Strip.
“Terror organizations are once again firing rockets from this area. The specified area has been warned several times in the past,” Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman said, publishing a map of the zones that are to be evacuated.
Civilians in the area were called to move to shelters in the center of Gaza City.
Palestinian officials and residents accuse Israel of depopulating the areas on the northern edge of the enclave to create a buffer zone, something Israel denies.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The thousands of terrorists who burst into the country also abducted 251 people who were taken as hostages.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Thursday that at least 44,835 people have been killed in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Some 1.9 million Palestinians of the 2.3 million Gazan population are residing in the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone,” according to IDF assessments.
The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, western neighborhoods of Khan Younis, and central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
The size of the zone has changed multiple times, amid evolving IDF operations against the Hamas terror group. As of late August, the zone is just over 46 square kilometers (17.7 square miles), or nearly 13 percent of the total size of the Gaza Strip.
