IDF, Shin Bet name senior Hamas terrorists killed at Shifa
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The IDF and Shin Bet security agency name additional senior Hamas operatives killed by troops at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital in recent days.
Troops have been raiding buildings at the hospital complex, following intelligence indicating that top officials in the terror group are holed up there.
In one incident, the IDF says troops of the Navy’s Shayetet 13 unit, Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion and Duvdevan unit encountered and killed a group of armed Hamas operatives who ran out of Shifa’s emergency room.
Among them was senior Hamas commander Raad Thabet — named by the IDF on Thursday as the head of the terror group’s recruitment and supply acquisition — and Mahmoud Khalil Zakzuk, who the IDF says is the deputy commander of Hamas’s rocket unit in Gaza City.
In another incident, troops of the Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance killed senior Hamas operatives Fadi Dweik and Zakaria Najib during a chase at Shifa’s maternity ward, according to the IDF.
The IDF and Shin Bet say Dweik was a senior member of Hamas’s intelligence division. He perpetrated the 2002 terrorist shooting attack in the West Bank settlement of Adora, killing four civilians, and was exiled to the Gaza Strip in the 2011 Shalit deal with Hamas, in which Israel released 1,027 Palestinian terror convicts in exchange for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
In Gaza, he continued to advance attacks in the West Bank, defense authorities say. Najib, according to the IDF and Shin Bet, was a senior operative in Hamas’s so-called West Bank headquarters, tasked with advancing attacks against Israel from the West Bank.
He is accused of involvement in the 1994 abduction and killing of Nachshon Wachsman, and was also released in the 2011 Shalit deal.
Other Hamas gunmen have been killed by troops in and around the hospital, the IDF says, adding that troops have seized weapons and intelligence documents.
