The Israeli Army confirmed this Tuesday that it had found around 1,500 bodies of Hamas militants in Israeli territory, which gives an idea of the number of troops that the Palestinian militia deployed for the attack against Israel.
“About 1,500 bodies (of Hamas fighters) were found in Israel around the Gaza Strip,” international spokesman for the Israeli army, Richard Hecht, told the media, whose comments attest to the magnitude of the attack launched on Saturday against the South of the country. .
Until now, the army spoke of a thousand Palestinian fighters infiltrated.
On the fourth day of hostilities, “the army more or less regained control of the border fence” with Gaza, “but infiltrations [de militantes do Hamas] can still happen,” Hecht added.
The official also stated that “since the beginning of last night, no one has entered” Israel from Gaza.
The army “has almost completed” the evacuation of the 24 places near the border from which it decided to remove the inhabitants.
The Islamic group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli territory this Saturday, called Operation “Al-Aqsa Storm”, with the launch of thousands of rockets and the incursion of armed militiamen by land, sea and air.
In response to the surprise attack, Israel bombed several Hamas facilities in the Gaza Strip from the air, in an operation it called “Iron Swords.”
Speaking to the Associated Press (AP) news agency on Monday, Ali Barakeh, a member of the Hamas leadership exiled in Beirut, stated that only a small number of commanders knew about the operation against Israel, hoping that Iran and the Shiite movement Lebanese Hezbollah will join the battle if Gaza is “subjected to a war of annihilation.”
Saturday’s attack caught Israel’s military and intelligence services by surprise when hundreds of Hamas gunmen entered through holes in the border fence and charged into several towns, killing hundreds of soldiers and civilians and taking hostages.
Barakeh said the attack was planned by about half a dozen senior Hamas commanders in Gaza and that not even the group’s closest allies were informed in advance about the timing of the attack.
“Only a handful of Hamas commanders knew about zero hour,” he said.
The most recent report from the Palestinian Health Ministry recorded at least 560 deaths due to Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, including dozens of minors and women, bringing the total number of deaths on both sides following the armed clashes to more than 1,250. It started on Saturday.
Source: TSF
