ISRAEL'S DETRACTORS WILL CALL THE SCHOOL STRIKE A WAR CRIME

IAF jets strike Hamas base hidden in Gaza school

Ahead of the airstrike, "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians," the IDF said. 

 

JNS

Aug 20, 2024

 

 

An Israeli Air Force F-15 fighter jet

 

Israeli Air Force jets carried out a precision strike on a Hamas command and control center inside a school building in Gaza City on Tuesday, killing several terrorists, the Israel Defense Forces stated.

The Hamas base was embedded in the Mustafa Hafez School, an educational institution under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority named after an Egyptian army officer who sent terrorists across the border to attack Israeli civilians in the 1950s, according to the IDF.

Ahead of the airstrike “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” according to the IDF.

“Hamas systematically violates international law and operates from within civilian infrastructure and shelters in Gaza, exploiting the Gazan civilian population for its terrorist activities,” the statement continued.

Earlier on Tuesday, IDF forces recovered in the Khan Younis area the bodies of six hostages kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

In an operation involving the IDF and the Israel Security Agency, security forces retrieved the bodies of Israeli hostages Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, Yagev Buchshtav, Chaim Peri and Alex Dancyg from a tunnel, 319 days after the Oct. 7 attacks.

 

The six hostages kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023 who were murdered by Hamas in Gaza. Their bodies were retrieved by the IDF in a tunnel in Khan Younis on Aug. 20, 2024.

IDF forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27 after weeks of airstrikes in response to the Oct. 7 massacre, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands more and abducted more than 250 others to Gaza.

In a statement on Monday afternoon, the army said that IDF troops operating across the southern part of Gaza had “expanded the attack in the Gaza Strip to Khan Younis and the outskirts of Deir al-Balah.”

Soldiers of the 7th Brigade’s combat team eliminated terrorists, in addition to destroying terror targets above and underground, added the military. In one operation, members of the 603rd Engineering Battalion uncovered dozens of rockets, launchers and several anti-tank missiles.

Acting on intelligence, the forces of the 603rd Battalion and Yahalom, a special unit of the Combat Engineering Corps, uncovered and destroyed a terror tunnel stretching around 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles).

Along the tunnel route, troops found a Hamas center that had recently been evacuated and seized equipment that was left behind.

Also on Monday, Lt. Shahar Ben Nun, 21, of the Paratrooper Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, was killed when an IAF missile malfunctioned during an airstrike in Khan Younis, bringing the death toll among Israeli troops since Oct. 27 to 300, or 693 on all fronts since the Oct. 7 massacre.