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The Israeli Air Force and Israeli Navy carried out strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight, killing top commanders in the general security mechanism of the Hamas Movement, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced on June 4.
In a statement, the military said that Hassan Labad, the deputy head of the security mechanism, along with senior officials Asem Shabir, Abdullah Abu Kaloub, and Mohammed Abu Marek, were killed in the strikes.
“The senior officials of the general security mechanism were eliminated to remove a threat, after they had recently been involved in attempts to rebuild the Hamas terror organization and in assisting the organization’s senior leadership in advancing terror activity against the State of Israel and IDF troops,” the military added.
The security mechanism, according to the IDF, is a clandestine Hamas body responsible for security for the group’s top commanders, communications between them, coordinating their meetings, and transporting them between emergency sites.
The mechanism is also responsible for producing intelligence assessments, “which assists the organization’s senior leadership in decision-making and in carrying out terror plans against the State of Israel,” the military said.
The IDF released videos showing two of the strikes. The targeting marks in one of the videos — a box with wide unconnected crosshairs — is identical to that used in a secretive jet-powered loitering munition used primarily by the Israeli Navy.
SouthFront revealed the existence of the loitering munition, installed on Sa’ar 4.5-class missile boat, in an investigation published last March based on open source material from Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. The latest footage represents the first ever evidence of the munition being used in Gaza.
Israel escalated its strikes on Gaza in recent weeks, targeting senior commanders of Hamas. The group’s military chief, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, was killed in a strike on May 15, and his successor, Mohammed Odeh, was targeted just eleven days later.
A recent report by Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that the chief of the IDF’s Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor, had been pushing for and recommending a new offensive against the Hamas Movement in the Gaza Strip during General Staff and political-level discussions.
The report suggested that the political echelon was not very enthusiastic about such a move currently, although recent remarks by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz suggests the opposite.
In any case, Hamas has been reportedly rearming, and preparing for such a scenario. And with the United States-sponsored peace plan not moving forward, the war in Gaza could resume once the Iran war is officially over. The IDF main task will be to take over more than the 60 percent already under its control.
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it’s past time to begin knocking off all the top jooz.
is sf absolutely sure the scum state didn’t just murder civilians? cos that’s all they ever do..