JERUSALEM — Israel has claimed its special forces captured the head of Hamas’s internal security service in a ground operation in Gaza on Tuesday.
Israel’s military and Shin Bet security service said a special forces unit arrested the man in Gaza City on Tuesday and then took him to Israel for questioning.
Palestinian media reported that Israeli special forces and Israel-backed Palestinian militiamen opposed to Hamas entered the area, but that their presence was discovered. Some Israeli media suggested that only a local armed militia operated on the ground.
A spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office, Ismail al-Thawabta, said: “An Israeli special forces unit attempted to carry out a security operation in Gaza City, but the unit was exposed while carrying out the mission.”
Israeli air strikes carried out during the raid killed at least four Palestinians, including two children and a woman, medics said.
On Tuesday morning, Palestinians in the crowded Katiba area of western Gaza City reported heavy Israeli bombardment, with two vehicles hit and turned to wreckage.
Videos captured chaotic scenes, with the sound of gunfire and the aftermath of strikes.
“A jeep stopped in the middle of the street and started firing indiscriminately left and right. It carried on firing at us like rain for more than 15 minutes,” Wafika al-Helou, who lives in a tent in the area, told AFP news agency. “It was terrifying.”
Another witness, Mutaz Abu Asr, said there were five or six strikes in less than three minutes.
The ensuing Israeli strikes “resulted in a number of people being killed and others injured, in addition to the deaths of several members of the special forces unit”, he added.
Later, Hamas issued a statement saying that the Israeli raid and strikes in a densely populated area constituted “a serious crime, a deliberate disregard for the lives of civilians, and an extension of the brutal war of annihilation against our people in the Gaza Strip”.
Israel’s prime minister commended the special forces for what he called the “daring operation” to arrest Hamas’s internal security chief near his home.
Benjamin Netanyahu said the man, whom he did not name, was “engaged in attempts to restore Hamas governance in Gaza and in deception concerning the demilitarisation of the Strip”.
“He is one of the most senior Hamas leaders, and was responsible for concealing and transporting our hostages, for sheltering senior Hamas figures, and for military build-up and attempts to restore the capabilities of the terror organisation,” Netanyahu added.
In a separate incident on Tuesday, hospital officials in central Gaza said a Palestinian girl was killed by gunfire from Israeli troops east of the town of Deir al-Balah.
The IDF also said it had carried out a strike on a commander of Hamas’s military wing in the Jabalia area, north of Gaza City, stressing that he had posed an immediate threat.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence rescue service said one of its first responders was seriously injured in a strike that targeted a person who had been passing by his station in Jabalia.
Israel killed two Palestinians and injured others on Wednesday in an airstrike and gunfire in Jabalia town and refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip despite an ongoing ceasefire, according to local sources.
Witnesses told Anadolu that Israeli forces opened fire toward tents housing displaced Palestinians in Jabalia town, while an Israeli drone struck a gathering of civilians in the Jabalia refugee camp.
A medical source at Al-Shifa Hospital told Anadolu that the bodies of two Palestinians and several injured people were brought to the hospital following the Israeli strike and gunfire in Jabalia. The exact number of those injured was not immediately available.
Source: Saudi Gazette