Israel army says Hamas command structure ‘dismantled’ in north Gaza
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Smoke billowing over Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, during Israeli bombardment in its ongoing war against Hamas.
PHOTO: AFP
JERUSALEM - The Israeli army said on Jan 6 it had “completed the dismantling” of Hamas’s command structure in the northern Gaza Strip.
“We have completed the dismantling of the Hamas military framework in the northern Gaza Strip,” army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters.
He added that Palestinian militants were now operating in the area only sporadically and “without commanders”.
“Now the focus is on dismantling Hamas in the centre of the Gaza Strip and in the south of the Gaza Strip,” he said, while acknowledging that the task will take time.
Israel vowed to crush Gaza’s Hamas rulers after the Palestinian militant group carried out the deadliest attack in the country’s history on Oct 7.
It resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The militants also took around 250 hostages, 132 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israel.
Israel responded by bombarding the territory
Speaking about military efforts to dismantle Hamas in the central and southern Gaza Strip, Rear-Admiral Hagari said “we will do it in a different way” without elaborating.
“The refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip are crowded and full of terrorists,” he said.
In the south, the large urban landscape of Khan Younis has an elaborate underground network of tunnels, he said.
“It takes time.”
Earlier on Jan 6, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government had directed the army to “eliminate Hamas”, return all the hostages and ensure that Gaza will “never again be a threat to Israel”.
“The war must not be stopped until we achieve all of the goals,” he said in a statement.
He vowed to achieve “complete victory” over the Palestinian militants as Israel kept up its bombing of Gaza on the day its war on Hamas approached its fourth month.
AFP correspondents reported Israeli strikes on the southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting.
Victims of the bombardment were brought to the European Hospital in Khan Younis, where relatives and mourners gathered.
EU-Hezbollah meeting
Top Western diplomats were in the region on Jan 6 as part of a fresh push to boost the flow of aid into Gaza and address mounting fears of a wider conflict.
In Beirut, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell met a senior figure in the political wing of Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah as part of efforts to prevent Lebanon being drawn into the war, an EU source confirmed.
Mr Borrell held talks with the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammad Raad, Lebanese media reported.
The EU is “engaging in diplomatic dialogue with all relevant political representatives who have influence on the situation on the ground or have a stake in it”, the EU source said.
The Hamas-allied Hezbollah movement has been trading near-daily fire with Israeli forces since early October and earlier fired a barrage of dozens of rockets at an Israeli military base in response to the killing of a senior Hamas figure in a suspected Israeli strike in Beirut last week.
Before heading to Saudi Arabia, Mr Borrell called for a redoubling of peace efforts.
“Israel has declared a goal to eradicate Hamas. There must be another way to eradicate Hamas that doesn’t... create so many people getting killed,” he said.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Greece
He said he wants to make sure the conflict in the Middle East “doesn’t spread”.
“One of the real concerns is the border between Israel and Lebanon, and we want to do everything possible to make sure we see no escalation,” he added.
Hezbollah said it had targeted the Israeli military’s Meron air control base with 62 missiles in its “initial response” to the killing of Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’ deputy leader, in Beirut.
The Israeli army reported “approximately 40 launches from Lebanon” and said it struck Hezbollah “military sites” in response.
By the afternoon, warning sirens had sounded seven times in northern Israel, the military said.
Contacted by AFP, a military spokesperson confirmed the mountaintop base had been targeted but did not say whether it was damaged. There were no immediate reports of any casualties.
Civilians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip have borne the brunt of the conflict as the scale of the destruction has triggered mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
With swathes of the territory reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths on Jan 5 said “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable”.
The World Health Organisation says the majority of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been put out of action by the fighting, while remaining medical facilities face dire shortages. AFP
