Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces captured a senior Hamas figure on Tuesday during a ground operation in Gaza that Palestinian health officials said killed four people.
Israeli media identified him as Muein al-Arabid. Israeli operations in Gaza have killed at least 1,326 people since the ceasefire came into effect, according to the Palestinian territory’s health ministry, which also operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
The premier said in a statement that the target was the head of Hamas’s internal security apparatus in Gaza, without giving more details. The army and Shin Bet domestic security service said in a joint statement that the target had “recently worked to consolidate the Hamas terrorist organization’s control over the northern Gaza Strip and to advance terrorist attacks against IDF troops”. In tandem with the ground operation, Israel “struck several targets in the area in order to remove threats” to its forces, the statement said. In a statement, Hamas condemned the “criminal operation” and said it “held communications with the mediators and Nickolay Mladenov”, the high representative for Gaza under the US-backed “Board of Peace” tasked with implementing an October ceasefire plan.
Eyewitnesses reported around a dozen strikes on Tuesday morning in western Gaza City, where the territory’s civil defence agency said three children and a woman were killed Arabid’s wife, according to Palestinian media.
