Israel strikes 'large scale' Hamas infrastructure in Gaza, kills another commander

Israel attacked Hamas' military infrastructure “on a large scale” overnight in the Gaza Strip, including tunnels, barracks and weapons warehouses, killing a commander of Khan Younis' northern battalion, Taysir Mubasher.

“In the past, he served as commander of Hamas' naval forces and held various positions in weapons manufacturing. “He had extensive military experience as a commander, directing terrorist attacks, and is a relative of senior Hamas officials, including Mohamed Deif, the supreme commander of Hamas' military wing,” an Israeli military spokesman said.

Mubasher is the ninth senior military official of the al-Qasam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, to die in the Israeli attacks on the enclave in the war with the Islamist militias of Gaza that began on October 7.

Since then, more than 300 rockets and mortar shells have been launched from the Khan Younis area he commanded, in the southern half of the enclave, toward Israel.

According to the Israeli Army, Mubasher was responsible for “numerous terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers,” including the 2019 attack on a yeshiva in Mechina, an Israeli town in the Negev Desert, in which five students died.

Intelligence information proved, according to Israel, that Mubasher manufactured the explosive devices used to blow up a tunnel under an Israeli military post in Gush Katif in 2004, which killed one soldier; he directed the attack on the Vered post in 2003; and was involved in the infiltration of Zikim beaches during the 2014 war in Gaza.

In the intense nighttime bombardments, Israel claimed to have dismantled important Hamas military infrastructure, such as tunnels, military barracks, weapons warehouses, mortar shell launchers and anti-tank missile launchers, a military statement indicated.

They also attacked Hamas's “emergency operational apparatus,” including war rooms and military barracks, which Israel said prevented Gazans from evacuating to “safer areas in the south,” although Israeli bombing has spread across the country. the entire Gazan geography, not just the north.

“The Defense Forces also attacked military infrastructure and command centers of the Hamas security apparatus, responsible for supervising the operation of the terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip and for arresting and imprisoning its opponents,” the statement added.

The brutal attack by Hamas on October 7 began the war between Israel and the Islamist militias in Gaza, which has claimed more than 1,400 victims in Israel – most of them civilians killed that same day in the largest massacre in the history of Israel -, in addition to 222 kidnapped in the enclave and around a hundred missing.

The intense and indiscriminate Israeli retaliatory bombings on the Strip have caused some 5,800 deaths – at least 70% are women, children and the elderly – and more than 16,300 injured, the largest human catastrophe also experienced in the punished enclave.