The Israeli Army has been operating in recent weeks in Rafah “to destroy the remaining underground hideouts in the area and eliminate the terrorists residing in them.”
MADRID, Nov 21. (EUROPA PRESS) – The Israeli Army announced on Friday the death of six alleged members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) that would have come out of a tunnel in the east of the city of Rafawithin the ‘yellow line’ to which Israeli troops retreated following the agreement in October to implement the first phase of the United States proposal for the Gaza Strip.
“Six terrorists were eliminated and five terrorists who emerged from an underground terrorist infrastructure were arrested,” he said in a statement published on his account on the social network
Thus, he stressed that “IDF forces from the Southern Command and the Shin Bet have been operating in the Rafah area in recent weeks, in a concentrated effort to destroy the remaining underground hideouts in the area and eliminate the terrorists residing there.”
“Following an initial investigation, it appears that early in the day approximately 15 terrorists emerged from an underground terrorist infrastructure in two locations in the area beyond the ‘yellow line’ in eastern Rafah,” leading to the launch of the aforementioned operation, in which “five terrorists” surrendered to the military.
In this sense, he highlighted that all of them have been transferred to Israeli territory to be interrogated by the Shin Bet, the internal Intelligence service, while highlighting that Israeli troops “continue searching the area by air and land to locate the rest of the terrorists”, without the Palestinian Islamist group having commented on the matter.
The Israeli authorities estimate that between one hundred and 200 militiamen from the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezeldin al Qasam Brigades, would be in tunnels located in the south of Gaza in areas under the control of Israeli troops, without an agreement having been reached for them to obtain safe passage to the areas from which Israeli forces withdrew as a result of the aforementioned agreement, which led to the entry into force of a ceasefire on October 10.