Israel: Key Oct. 7 planner killed, underground Hamas complex destroyed

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — A barrage of Israeli airstrikes leveled apartment buildings in a refugee camp near Gaza City on Tuesday. Israel said the strike, which targeted a senior Hamas military leader, destroyed a terrorist command center and an underground tunnel network.

The Israeli military said dozens of terrorists were killed, including a key Hamas commander for northern Gaza.

Military spokesman Jonathan Conricus saying the targeted commander had also been a key planner of the barbaric Oct. 7 terrorist attack that started the war, and that the apartment buildings collapsed only because the vast underground Hamas complex had been destroyed.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ ability to govern Gaza or threaten Israel following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Hamas openly calls for the destruction of Israel.

Israel said two of its soldiers were killed in fighting in northern Gaza, the first military deaths it reported since the ground offensive accelerated late last week.

The Israeli military said it carried out a wide-scale strike in the Jabaliya camp on Hamas infrastructure “that had taken over civilian buildings.”

Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari said an underground Hamas installation beneath a targeted building collapsed, toppling other nearby buildings. Conricus later said the main strike had hit between buildings.

“We don’t intend for the ground to collapse,” he told reporters. “But the issue is that Hamas built their tunnels there and that they’re running their operations from there.”

He said the commander killed in the strike, Ibrahim Biari, played an important role in the Oct. 7 attack and had been involved in anti-Israel attacks going back decades.

Also on Tuesday, the Israeli military said ground troops took control of a Hamas military stronghold in west Jabaliya, killing 50 terrorists.

Hagari repeated calls for civilians to evacuate northern Gaza to the south.

The military says it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the terrorists endanger civilians by operating among them. The military has also repeatedly emphasized it will strike Hamas wherever it finds it.

Some 800,000 Palestinians have reportedly fled to the south, but many have not, in part because they say nowhere is safe as Israeli airstrikes in the south have continued to cause civilian deaths. The window to flee may be closing, as Israeli forces reached Gaza’s main north-south highway this week.

Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack, an unprecedented figure. Hamas terrorists also abducted around 240 people during their incursion and have continued firing rockets into Israel.

More than 8,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, the Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday.

A day after Israel’s first successful rescue of a Hamas captive, the spokesman of the terrorist group’s armed wing said they plan to release some non-Israeli hostages in coming days.

Hamas has previously released four hostages, and has said it would let the others go in return for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, which has dismissed the offer.

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have fled their homes, with hundreds of thousands sheltering in packed U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters or at hospitals.

The war has also threatened to ignite fighting on other fronts. Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group have traded fire daily along the border, and Israel and the U.S. have struck targets in Syria linked to Iran, which supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups in the region.

Some 200,000 people have been evacuated from Israeli towns near Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon.

The military said it shot down what appeared to be a drone near the southernmost city of Eilat and intercepted a missile over the Red Sea on Tuesday, neither of which entered Israeli airspace.

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen later claimed they fired ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, saying it was their third such operation and threatening more. Earlier this month, a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea intercepted missiles and drones launched toward Israel by the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen.

In the occupied West Bank, where Israeli-Palestinian violence has also surged, the army demolished the family home of Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official exiled over a decade ago. An official in the village of Aroura said the home had been vacant for 15 years.

Israeli forces reportedly have advanced north and east of Gaza City. South of the city, Israeli troops were also trying to cut off the territory’s main highway and the parallel road along the Mediterranean coast, according to Dawood Shehab, a spokesperson for Islamic Jihad, a smaller terrorist group allied with Hamas.

The Israeli military said it struck some 300 militant targets over the past day, including compounds inside tunnels, and that troops had engaged in several battles with militants armed with antitank missiles and machine guns.