IDF says division struck 1,600 Hamas targets, killed over 300 terrorists while crossing Gaza
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

The Israel Defense Forces releases information on the 36th Division’s operations in the Gaza Strip over the past week, during which its forces led a maneuver across the territory, reaching its coastline.
“The role of the division is to surround Gaza City, to attack and destroy selected targets, including significant assets, and the headquarters of the Hamas terror organization,” the IDF says in a statement.
It says the 36th Division — made up of infantry forces, tanks, artillery, and combat engineers — struck some 1,600 Hamas targets, including infrastructure used by the terror group, weapon depots, anti-tank missile positions and observation posts.
The IDF says the division also killed more than 300 Hamas terror operatives amid the fighting.
It adds that in the last few hours alone, some 50 Hamas sites were hit and several gunmen were killed in close-quarters fighting.
The division has been moving at a slow pace, in order to properly clear areas of potential threats, including tunnels which are later destroyed.
A major threat that the division is working to counter is the large number of tunnels Hamas has, from which operatives pop out and launch RPGs at armored vehicles, and attempt to ambush forces.
Still, the 36th Division has identified that Hamas has recently struggled to carry out large-scale organized attacks on troops, after Israeli airstrikes killed senior Hamas field commanders.
Heavy artillery strikes have been carried out within just a few hundred meters of the Israeli forces to push back any Hamas operatives seeking to target troops.
The military says it has ways to target Hamas operatives inside tunnels as well.
Amid the incursion, the division made various adjustments to counter Hamas’s use of drones to drop explosives on troops in the Gaza Strip, The Times of Israel has learned.
Meanwhile, rockets have not been fired at Israel from the areas that the 36th Division captured.
The IDF believes the ongoing stage in the ground offensive will last several months, in order to achieve the objective of eliminating Hamas’s Gaza City stronghold with minimal casualties to Israeli forces.