The IDF and Shin Bet security agency on Saturday announced that four senior Hamas terrorists were killed by troops at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital in recent days.
Troops have been raiding buildings at the hospital complex, following intelligence indicating that top officials in the terror group are holed up there. They’ve arrested hundreds of terror operatives and killed over 200 in days-long exchanges of fire at the complex.
In one incident, the IDF said troops of the Navy’s Shayetet 13 unit, Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion and Duvdevan unit encountered and killed a group of armed Hamas operatives who ran out of Shifa’s emergency room.
Among them was senior Hamas commander Raad Thabet — named by the IDF on Thursday as the head of the terror group’s recruitment and supply acquisition — and Mahmoud Khalil Zakzuk, who the IDF says is the deputy commander of Hamas’s rocket unit in Gaza City.
In another incident, troops of the Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance unit killed senior Hamas operatives Fadi Dweik and Zakaria Najib during a chase at Shifa’s maternity ward, according to the IDF.
The IDF and Shin Bet say Dweik was a senior member of Hamas’s intelligence division. He perpetrated the 2002 terrorist shooting attack in the West Bank settlement of Adora, killing four civilians, and was exiled to the Gaza Strip in the 2011 Shalit deal with Hamas, in which Israel released 1,027 Palestinian terror convicts in exchange for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
L-R: These handout images show Hamas commanders Mahmoud Khalil Zakzuk, Zakaria Najib, and Fadi Dweik, who the IDF says were killed by troops at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, March 30, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)
In Gaza, he continued to advance attacks in the West Bank, defense officials say. Najib, according to the IDF and Shin Bet, was a senior operative in Hamas’s so-called West Bank headquarters, tasked with promoting attacks against Israel from the West Bank.
He is accused of involvement in the 1994 abduction and killing of Nachshon Wachsman, and was also released in the 2011 Shalit deal.
Other Hamas gunmen have been killed by troops in and around the hospital, the IDF said, adding that troops have seized weapons and intelligence documents.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi hailed the ongoing operation at Shifa Hospital during a visit to the medical center on Friday.
“Almost two weeks, very, very successful, and this is an operation… to plan it in a war, to carry it out in a war, to execute it correctly in a war, [is] very, very complex,” Halevi told troops.
“So far [there have been] very great achievements… no one can roll back [the effects of] such a large number of arrested terrorists, such a large number of dead terrorists, so many senior people,” he said.
Halevi said the operation has “achieved its goal,” but added that it will continue “thoroughly until it is announced that we are done.”
IDF troops operate in the Gaza Strip in an undated handout photo released on March 30, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)
The Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said Saturday that at least 32,705 people had been killed in the territory during more than five months of war between Israel and the Palestinian terror group.
The toll includes at least 82 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 75,190 people had been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war was triggered by the devastating Hamas-led onslaught against Israel on October 7.
The Hamas-run ministry’s figures, which are unverified, do not differentiate between fighters and civilians, and are also believed to include Palestinians killed by terrorists’ misfired rockets. Israel says some 13,000 terror operatives are among the dead.
Earlier Saturday the Palestine Red Crescent said five people were killed and dozens wounded by gunfire and a stampede during an aid delivery in Gaza.
Palestinian children fetch water in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 30, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. (MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
AFP said it had footage of a convoy of trucks moving quickly past burning debris near the distribution point in pre-dawn darkness as people shout and gunfire echoes — some of which were warning shots, according to unnamed witnesses quoted by the French news agency.
The Red Crescent said it happened after thousands of people gathered for the arrival of around 15 trucks of flour and other food, which were supposed to be handed out at Gaza City’s Kuwait roundabout, in the territory’s north.
The roundabout has been the scene of several chaotic and…
Read More: IDF, Shin Bet say several senior Hamas terrorists killed as Shifa op continues