IDF publishes Hamas document with plans to plant explosives near displaced-person camps in Gaza

The Israeli military publishes what it says is an internal Hamas document detailing the terror group’s efforts to plant bombs near displaced persons camps in the Gaza Strip during the war.

The document, written in April 2024, “shows that Hamas’s engineering department proposed planting explosive devices around displaced persons camps and detonating them as IDF troops approached, placing the civilian population in the camps at risk, to create panic as a smokescreen for the escape of its operatives,” the military says.

The IDF says the document was part of Hamas’s “preparations to protect its leadership and operatives and evacuate them from areas where the IDF was expected to operate, while endangering and exploiting the civilian population in the area, fully aware that these actions were likely to cause direct harm to civilians.”

“In the document, the Hamas terror organization proposed an additional method of planting explosive devices along routes used by residents of the Gaza Strip, as part of an attempt to delay the advance of IDF troops in the area,” the military says.

Another proposal in the document included firing “stun grenades into the camps to create chaos and panic, to allow Hamas terrorists hiding in the area to flee.”

“This is further evidence that the Hamas terror organization is willing to endanger the lives of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip to advance its terrorist activities,” the IDF adds.