IDF: Troops capture Hamas redoubt, strike terrorists hiding near Gaza City hospital
Troops press offensive on outskirts of Gaza’s largest city, uncovering weapons and calling in airstrikes on terror squads amid fighting
Israeli soldiers took control of a Hamas military stronghold in the heart of Gaza City and struck terror operatives barricading themselves near a hospital, the Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday, as the military continued to deepen and expand its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Days after surrounding Gaza City and saying the Strip had been cut in half, troops appeared to be concentrating efforts on capturing command and control centers and flushing Hamas members from hideouts on the outskirts of the crowded city, some of which the army charges are near or under the enclave’s overstretched hospitals.
Residents in northern Gaza reported heavy battles overnight into Tuesday morning in the city’s outer areas. The Shati refugee camp, a built-up district on Gaza City’s northern coast, has been heavily bombarded from the air and sea over the past two days, residents said.
Near Al-Quds Hospital in the Shejaiya neighborhood in the city’s east, the military said it found a number of Hamas gunmen barricaded inside a building planning to attack troops. An aerial attack was directed at the site, which led to “significant secondary explosions” that indicated the presence of a weapons depot, the IDF said.
Reports Monday night also indicated fighting was nearing Shifa Hospital, the Strip’s largest medical center — which Jerusalem says is located above Hamas’s central command center.
The IDF did not offer details about the captured Hamas stronghold, saying only that they located anti-tank missiles and launchers, intelligence materials and other weaponry at the site in northern Gaza.
The military said ground forces operating in the area also directed warplanes to strike a cell of some 10 Hamas members and later directed an additional airstrike on an anti-tank squad identified nearby.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement that there were “many days of combat ahead. This war is different from those that came before. It will take time.” He added that those responsible for the atrocities of October 7 “will not continue to exist.
“We will bring Hamas to a state it will not be able to recover from.”
Overnight the military targeted dozens of positions used to launch mortars into Israel, the IDF said. Naval forces off the enclave’s coast also attacked a number of Hamas targets using precision weaponry.
The IDF issued footage of strikes on Hamas command posts, weapons caches and infrastructure.
מצורף תיעוד מתקיפות צה"ל ברצועת עזה: pic.twitter.com/cZpI9jJGeg
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No new Israeli casualties were announced. The army says 30 troops have been killed since the ground offensive began almost two weeks ago, and several more injured.
On Monday, the military said it was moving forces further into the Strip and continuing to target Hamas’s underground tunnel network and military capabilities.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said ground forces were “deepening the pressure on Gaza City” after isolating and surrounding the northern section of the Strip.
The military said the head of the IDF Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, entered the Gaza Strip Monday with ground forces to carry out an assessment on Hamas tunnels.
Gaza health authorities, controlled by Hamas, said Monday that more than 10,000 people, including many women and children, had been killed in the fighting. The figures issued by the terror group cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include its own terrorists and gunmen and those killed by the hundreds of rockets fired by terror groups that have fallen short inside the Strip.
Israel says its offensive in Gaza, brought on by Hamas’s killing of some 1,400 people on October 7 in a brutal attack on southern communities, is aimed at destroying Hamas’s infrastructure and ending its control over the territory. It says it is targeting all areas where Hamas operates.
With international criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war mounting, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for children,” drawing angry censure from Jerusalem.
Several hundred thousand people are believed to remain in the north in the assault’s path, despite Israeli pleas for civilians to move south. The military says a one-way corridor for residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas to flee south remains available.
Israel says it is seeking to minimize civilian casualties, but heavy fighting in crowded residential neighborhoods has heaped pressure on Jerusalem for a ceasefire, which it has rejected outright as a chance to allow Hamas to regroup.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of attempting to prevent Palestinians from evacuating northern Gaza, including firing on them and bombing evacuation routes, due to its desire to keep civilians around its centers of activity as human shields.
On Sunday, the IDF released new intel and evidence showing Hamas using hospitals to carry out its operations, including the Qatari-funded Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Hospital.
Qatar’s ambassador for Gaza Mohamed al-Emadi said the charge was “without concrete evidence… and a blatant attempt to justify the occupation’s targeting of civilian facilities, including hospitals, schools, gatherings of population and shelters of displaced people.”
Indonesia also denied Israel’s claim a hospital it funded sits atop a network of Hamas tunnels and is located near a launchpad for rocket attacks. “The Indonesian Hospital in Gaza is a facility built by the Indonesian people entirely for humanitarian purposes and to serve the medical needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Indonesia’s foreign ministry said.
While Washington backs Israel’s rejection of a ceasefire, US pressure for short humanitarian pauses has grown as the fighting has raged.
In an interview with ABC News late Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to shift his refusal to consider a humanitarian pause without the release of hostages, saying Israel could halt its campaign for “an hour here, an hour there” to allow aid to move through the Strip.
Netanyahu spoke by phone about the matter with US President Joe Biden on Monday, according to the White House.
The US believes such pauses would help enable civilians to reach safer locations in Gaza, ensure humanitarian aid is reaching civilians in need, and enable potential hostage releases, said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Netanyahu also told ABC News that Israel will have “overall security responsibility” over the Gaza Strip “for an indefinite period” after its war against Hamas ends. He did not offer details on what Israeli security oversight in Gaza would entail and whether this would include a long-term military presence.
Israel declared war on Hamas after some 3,000 terrorists breached the Gaza border on October 7, slaughtering around 1,400 people — mainly civilians — in communities in southern Israel. They also took at least 240 hostages to the Strip, including at least 30 children.
Faced with the worst civilian trauma in its history, Israel has vowed to end Hamas’s control of the territory and eliminate the terror threat that has constantly emanated from the enclave for the better part of two decades.
Agencies contributed to this report.
