IDF forces discovered a stolen car, belonging to one of the hostages, with RPG parts and bloodstains inside.
By Joshua Marks, JNS
Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck over 100 Hamas terror targets in the Gaza Strip during the previous 24 hours as Israel’s combined ground, naval, and aerial offensive continued across the coastal enclave.
Among the targets hit were tunnel shafts, terror infrastructure, and military sites, the Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday.
Additionally, soldiers from the 261st Brigade, the Bahad 1 officers’ school in wartime, engaged a terrorist squad in the Jabalia area. The terrorists were killed and the building they were operating in was destroyed.
In Khan Yunis in the south of the Strip, an IAF aircraft eliminated over 10 terrorists operating in the area, and in a separate incident destroyed a building where weapons were stored and eliminated a terror squad moving toward the building.
Israeli forces conducted searches of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad headquarters in the Daraj a-Tupah neighborhood of Gaza City, locating weapons, explosive charges, and ammunition, along with intelligence documents and military equipment.
IDF soldiers find hostage’s car, Hamas truck at hospital
Israeli forces from the Israeli Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit and the 551st Brigade found the car of an Israeli hostage and a white Hamas pickup truck during a raid of the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, the IDF said on Monday.
Weapons were located in the Hamas vehicle, which the IDF said was similar to those used by terrorists during the Oct. 7 massacre in the northwestern Negev.
The hostage’s car, a Toyota Corolla with Israeli license plates, belonged to the family of Samar Talalka, who was kidnapped on Oct. 7 and mistakenly killed by Israeli forces on Dec. 15 along with two other hostages after escaping their Hamas captors.
Talalka, Yotam Haim, and Alon Shamriz were mistakenly killed while hiding in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City.
Inside the car, troops found parts of an RPG launcher and blood stains left by another hostage.
The IDF said that there is extensive terror infrastructure within the hospital, which was used as a meeting place for Hamas terrorists to manage the fighting and a base for senior Hamas officials and operatives. “The hospital has extensive terrorist infrastructure and nearby there are shafts leading to a tunnel route in the hospital area,” the IDF said.
“The Indonesian hospital is another example of Hamas making use of civilian infrastructure, in order to act and realize its goals. Shayetet 13 will continue to act, to fight, as much as it takes in order to subdue the Hamas organization,” said Lt. Col. A, commander of the commando unit’s raiding party.
Two more fallen soldiers named
The IDF on Tuesday morning released for publication the names of two more soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip: Staff Sgt. Elisha Yehonatan Lober, 24, from Yitzhar, and Sgt. First Class Joseph Gitarts, 25, from Tel Aviv.
A total of 158 soldiers have been killed since the start of the Gaza ground invasion on Oct. 27; 491 soldiers have fallen since the war began on Oct. 7.