IDF: Deputy head of Islamic Jihad weapons manufacturing unit killed in Gaza airstrike

A senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, the military says, as troops continue operations in Rafah and the Netzarim Corridor.

Muhammad al-Jabari was the deputy head of an Islamic Jihad weapons manufacturing unit, and responsible for the unit’s finances, according to the IDF.

The IDF says that al-Jabari “was entrusted with the organization’s production of weapons in the northern Gaza Strip, distribution of salaries and money to the organization’s terrorists, and took an active part in the attempt to restore the organization’s rocket production capabilities and infrastructure.”

The military carried out “many steps” to mitigate harm to civilians in the strike, including using aerial surveillance and precision munitions, the IDF says.

Meanwhile, the IDF says that troops with the 162nd Division killed more than 30 gunmen in close-quarters combat and by calling in airstrikes in southern Gaza’s Rafah in the past day.

In the Netzarim Corridor in the central Gaza Strip where the 252nd Division is deployed, reservists with the division’s Jerusalem Brigade spotted a cell of gunmen emerging from a tunnel, and called in a drone strike, according to the military.

In the same area amid operations by the Harel Reserve Armored Brigade, an attack helicopter struck a building used as a weapons depot, the IDF adds.