From the Liveblog of
Friday, May 31, 2024
Israel says it killed 18 members of Gaza-based Hamas cell in charge of West Bank attacks
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleEmanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The Shin Bet security agency says Israeli forces have killed 18 members of Hamas’s so-called West Bank headquarters — a unit based in the Gaza Strip that is responsible for advancing terror attacks against Israel from and within the West Bank — amid the ongoing war.
Among those killed was Yassin Rabia, the head of the unit. Rabia was killed alongside another top member of the headquarters in a strike in Rafah earlier this week. Dozens of Palestinian civilians were also killed after a fire broke out nearby.
Another nine members of the unit have been detained by troops in the Gaza Strip, the Shin Bet adds.
The agency says the unit is primarily made up of Hamas members who were exiled to Gaza in a 2011 deal with Hamas, in which Israel released 1,027 Palestinian terror convicts in exchange for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Members of the unit make contact with West Bank Palestinians in order to recruit them to carry out terror attacks in the territory and in Israel proper, it says.
Among those detained by troops in November was Mahmoud Bashir Tanira, who the Shin Bet says is a member of a West Bank headquarters unit involved in directing attacks.
The Shin Bet says Tanira’s interrogation revealed that the unit was involved in numerous terror attacks in the West Bank between 2022 and 2023, which resulted in the deaths of eight Israelis and the injury of others.
According to the Shin Bet, among the attacks directed by the unit were a shooting against the settlement of Beit El in October 2022, in which an Israeli civilian was wounded; a shooting at a gas station near Eli in June 2023, in which four Israeli civilians were killed and two were injured; a shooting near the settlement of Kedumim in July 2023, in which a soldier was killed; a shooting at a car wash in Huwara in August 2023, in which two Israeli civilians were killed; a shooting at the Hamra junction in August 2023, in which an Israeli civilian was wounded; and a shooting near Hebron in August 2023 in which an Israeli civilian was killed.
According to the Shin Bet, the unit was involved in at least 20 more shooting attacks in the West Bank last year.
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