Photo: Israeli forces after taking over Gaza’s Hamas headquarters.
Israel-Hamas War: IDF captures Hamas headquarters in Gaza
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) says it has captured several key buildings belonging to the Islamist terrorist group, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, as part of its ongoing offensive against the militants.
Reuters News Agency reports that the buildings taken over by the IDF included “the headquarters of the Hamas legislative assembly and government, the headquarters of the Hamas Police and an engineering faculty used for the production and development of weapons.
The military also said that the Golani Brigade had secured the governor’s residence, which was used by Hamas as a facility for its military and police offices, as well as its military intelligence offices and various outposts.
The report quoted an Israeli military spokesman as claiming that some of these buildings were used as training sites for the attack that Hamas launched against Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 Israelis and captured more than 240 hostages, who were taken to Gaza.
The IDF spokesman added that the buildings were seized “in recent days” by the combined forces of the Seventh Brigade.
The Israeli offensive, which began with airstrikes and naval bombardment, and later escalated to a ground invasion, has killed more than 11,180 Palestinians, wounded 28,200, left 3,000 missing and displaced more than 1.5 million in Gaza, while 46 Israeli soldiers have also died.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas’s rocket launchers, tunnels and command centers, but has also inadvertently hit civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals, schools and power plants.
Despite calls from the United Nations and several countries for an immediate ceasefire, Israel has turned a deaf ear making the prospects of a diplomatic solution bleak for now, as Israel insists on completely destroying Hamas’s capacity to threaten it in future.
