The coming year will be “challenging” for the Jewish state, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi said Sunday, suggesting that the war against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad will last all of 2024.
“We will be at war in Gaza, I don’t know if all year—we will be fighting in Gaza all year, that’s for sure,” Halevi said following a situational assessment with officers and commanders of the IDF’s Judea and Samaria Division.
The Defense Ministry expects to recognize at least 12,500 IDF soldiers as wounded veterans in the wake of the Hamas-initiated war, Ynet reported over the weekend, citing a study carried out by a consultancy firm.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in southwestern Israel, more than 2,000 wounded IDF soldiers have already received treatment from the Rehabilitation Department, local media reported last month.
On Sunday night, the IDF announced that troops operating in Gaza City’s Shejaiya district discovered additional proof of Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s participation in the Oct. 7 massacre alongside Hamas terrorists.
In the northern part of Shejaiya, soldiers of the IDF’s Yiftah Brigade uncovered and destroyed several tunnel shafts near the house of Ahmed Samara, the terrorist in charge of PIJ’s tunnel project in northern Gaza.
During the military operation, soldiers found training plans and blueprints for the Oct. 7 attacks, numerous weapons and a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the IDF said.
Palestinian terrorists opened fire and set off an explosive inside the shaft in an attempt to harm the IDF forces and prevent the tunnel’s destruction, the army added, noting that soldiers were able to kill the terrorists and retreat before the explosion took place.
Palestinian reports on Sunday also claimed the death in an Israeli airstrike of Ali Salem Abu Ajwa, the grandson of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel during the Second Intifada.
No comments:
Post a Comment