10 months ago

Watch: Rockets Launched From Northern Gaza

Latest updates: Herzi Halevi says the military is getting close to defeating Hamas’s Rafah Brigade • Two members of Metula’s local security team were injured by last night’s Hezbollah anti-tank missile attack • prominent Hamas terrorist involved in developing weapons for the terror group killed • Full Story, Watch

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi says the military is getting close to defeating Hamas’s Rafah Brigade.

“We have very high achievements in the fighting in Rafah,” Halevi says during a visit to the city in the southern Gaza Strip.

“This is reflected in the amount of terrorists killed, also in the destroyed infrastructure, [and] the tunnels,”.

Halevi says the IDF’s control of the so-called Philadelphi Route on the Gaza-Egypt border is “very, very significant.” He says it closes Hamas’s “oxygen pipeline for future smuggling.”

“We are clearly approaching the point where we [can] say we dismantled the Rafah Brigade. It is defeated not in the sense that there are no more terrorists in it, but in the sense that it does not know how to function as a fighting framework,” he says.

Halevi says “many” of the Rafah Brigade’s operatives have been killed, adding to troops that “you will take care to kill as many terrorists as possible and destroy as much infrastructure as possible until the end of the war.

Two members of Metula’s local security team were injured by last night’s Hezbollah anti-tank missile attack.

One was seriously wounded while the other is listed in good condition.

The pair, like all local security officers in border communities, are listed by the IDF as reservists amid the war.

Meanwhile, fighter jets struck several Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight.

The military says the sites included a building used by Hezbollah in Aitaroun, along with other infrastructure in Kafr Kila and Khiam.

A prominent Hamas terrorist involved in developing weapons for the terror group was killed in a drone strike in the Gaza Strip yesterday.

The IDF says Muhammad Salah “took part in a project to develop strategic weapons” for Hamas, as well as commanding several more squads that were developing weaponry.

Many more strikes were carried out across Gaza over the past day, including tunnel shafts and cells of gunmen, the military says.

The strikes come as troops continue to operate in southern Gaza’s Rafah and in the Netzarim Corridor in the Strip’s center.

In Rafah, the IDF says troops advanced in the Tel Sultan neighborhood, locating weapons and rocket launchers used in previous attacks.

IDF forces raided Kafrr Ni’ma and Silwad overnight, confiscating military equipment and arresting and interrogating wanted suspects.

Since the war began, about 4,150 wanted terrorists have been arrested throughout Yehuda and Shomron, about 1.750 of whom are associated with Hamas.

Two rockets were launched from the northern Gaza Strip today, one toward the southern coastal city of Ashkelon and the other at the border community of Mefalsim.

According to the Ashkelon municipality, the rocket launched at the city was intercepted by air defenses.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service says it is treating two people who fell over while running to shelters as sirens sounded in Ashkelon and several more towns near the Strip.

There are no reports of damage in the attack.