1 of 3 | Israel’s military offensive in northern — Gaza seen here from southern Israel on Wednesday, November 22, 2023 — intensified ahead of a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that was slated to begin Thursday was pushed back by 24 hours. Photo by Jim Hollander/UPI | License Photo
Israeli forces stepped up their attacks on northern Gaza as a truce draws closer, mounting 300 airstrikes against Hamas infrastructure and killing dozens of the group’s fighters in a ground operation.
Targets included operational headquarters, tunnels, factories producing improvised explosive devices and warehouses storing them as well as anti-tank launching posts, Israel Defense Forces said Thursday in a series of posts on X. Advertisement
Fire from the IDF’s 215th Artillery Regiment hit targets in the Jabaliya neighborhood with the unit calling in an airstrike to halt a Hamas counter-attack and a precision-guided bomb to destroy an observation post.
Remotely manned aircraft and tanks also “eliminated several terrorist squads” during other battles involving Israeli infantry across districts in the north.
IDF said ground troops killed dozens of Hamas fighters in an operation targeting the headquarters of Hamas’ Northern Brigade in the Sheikh Zayed area of the strip.
“Sheikh Zayed is a neighborhood in which many senior operatives of the Hamas terrorist organization live. In this area there are many Hamas outposts that are used, among other things, by Hamas’ Nukhba forces and are located in the heart of the civilian population,” IDF said in a news release. Advertisement
In one outpost, troops located several tunnel shafts, including a strategic tunnel shaft 165 feet deep by 23 feet wide and training mock-ups of an IDF armored fighting vehicle and the security fence that walls off Gaza from Israel.
They also found launch complexes, with one equipped with a lathe for producing rockets, underground pits for launching rockets and numerous weapons.
“As part of the activity, the soldiers eliminated dozens of terrorists in the area. At the end of the operation, the soldiers destroyed the outpost,” IDF said.
The guns were expected to have fallen silent Thursday at 10 a.m. local time under a truce in the fighting agreed between Israel and Hamas earlier in the week, but an eleventh-hour logistical snag pushed it back to Friday.
