Tel Aviv: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday announced that its troops have raided the Hamas militant group’s general security headquarters in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya area as the military intensifies its ground offensive in the besieged enclave.
In a statement, the military that the 551st Brigade of the IDF along with the Shayetit 13 commando unit of the Israel Navy conducted a joint raid at the group’s security headquarters during which arms and ammunition were seized.
The IDF also said that the Air Force carried out several strikes destroying arms and ammunition of the Hamas, including rockets.
According to the military, the troops had struck a group of elite Hamas Nukhba operatives during a joint operation with the Paratroopers Brigade on Monday.
The Navy also carried out dozens of strikes along the Gaza coast, aiding the ground forces, the IDF added.
The Forces also said that troops have “completed the encirclement” of the Jabaliya refugee camp, the largest in Gaza.
The IDF said it “took control of key military posts from which attacks on IDF troops have been carried out.”
It said weapons and launchers had been located “in civilian compounds,” and it had “located and destroyed rockets found in the garden of a residence in the northern Gaza Strip”.
Jabaliya is a densely populated refugee camp established shortly after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from territory that encompassed the newly established State of Israel, and later denied return.
The camp is a crowded, built-up area, with houses, shops and apartment buildings jammed up against one another.
Israeli strikes in October targeting Hamas commanders and the militant group’s infrastructure in the camp left catastrophic damage and killed a large number of people, according to eyewitnesses and medics in the enclave.
–IANS