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Troops also recover bodies of six hostages in Khan Younis; military says Palestinians can return to neighborhoods that were excluded from humanitarian zone ahead of operation.
The Israel Defense Forces on Friday wrapped up a three-week-long operation in the southern Gaza Strip, during which the military said it demolished tunnels, killed over 250 gunmen and recovered the bodies of six hostages.
The raid, in Khan Younis and on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah, was launched by the 98th Division in early August. The division was withdrawn from Gaza early Friday as it prepared for future operations, the IDF said.
It was the third time that the IDF had reentered Khan Younis since its initial ground offensive there earlier this year. The latest operations have focused on recovering the bodies of hostages and demolishing Hamas infrastructure with new intelligence.
According to the military, amid the operation this past month, combat engineers demolished six separate tunnels belonging to terror groups, totaling some six kilometers (3.7 miles) of underground passages.
Inside some of the tunnels, troops killed gunmen, located areas where terror operatives had resided and found weapons, the military said.
Hamas infrastructure above ground was also demolished amid the operation, the IDF said.
The military said troops also located weapons, rocket launchers and intelligence materials at a “central” Hamas outpost in the Deir al-Balah area.
In the Hamad Town residential complex of Khan Younis, the IDF recovered the bodies of six hostages from a Hamas tunnel last week.
The hostages were Alex Dancyg, 75, Yagev Buchshtav, 35, Chaim Peri, 79, Yoram Metzger, 80, Nadav Popplewell, 51, and Avraham Munder, 78.
Following the operation, the IDF said Palestinian civilians could return to areas in the al-Qarara suburb of Khan Younis. The area had been evacuated ahead of the operation in Khan Younis and was temporarily removed from the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone.”
Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, said that the previously evacuated areas would now again be considered as part of the humanitarian zone. He published a map showing the changes to the zone.
Some 1.9 million Palestinians of the 2.3 million Gazan population are residing in the humanitarian zone, according to IDF assessments in July.
The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, western neighborhoods of Khan Younis and central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
The size of the zone has changed multiple times, amid evolving IDF operations against the Hamas terror group.
As of Friday, the zone is just over 46 square kilometers (17.7 square miles), or nearly 13 percent of the total size of the Gaza Strip.
Also on Friday morning, the IDF said that more than 30 sites in the Gaza Strip were struck by the Israeli Air Force in the past day.
The targets included rocket launchers, buildings used by terror groups, weapon depots and other infrastructure, according to the IDF.
The military also said that troops with the 162nd Division killed dozens of gunmen in southern Gaza’s Rafah in the previous 24 hours.
Military sources said Thursday that Hamas’s Rafah Brigade had “collapsed” as a result of the IDF’s ongoing offensive in the city in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel launched its war against Hamas in Gaza following the terror group’s onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, during which it killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, 103 of whom are believed to still be held in the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and about 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Times of Israel