Fighting in south Gaza remains intense-Israels defense minister, Gallant
…Says only a few thousands terrorists left in north
Joseph Irikefe
Touring the Salah a-Din road in the central Gaza Strip, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says, “The sense that we are stopping [the campaign against Hamas] is wrong.”
“You are on the corridor; the meaning of this is that on both your sides, operations of a different kind will soon take place,” Gallant says to troops of the 99th Division’s 646th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, which are operating in the Strip’s center.
“To the north, we destroyed 12 Hamas battalions. Terrorists still remain, a few thousand of the 15,000 or 18,000 that were in the area. A large number of them were eliminated and others fled to the south,” Gallant says.
In northern Gaza, Gallant says, the IDF will continue to conduct smaller operations to root out the last Hamas fighters. “The goal is to exhaust the enemy, kill [its operatives], and achieve a situation in which we control the territory,” he says.
“In the south of the Gaza Strip the situation is different,” Gallant says.
He says the IDF is focused on what is above the Hamas tunnels in the Khan Younis area, “where senior Hamas officials are hiding, at great depths.”
“We are already reaching them… and it is happening already now,” Gallant says.
He says the fighting in southern Gaza will remain at “high intensity.”
“The results will be clear results,” Gallant vows. “We will end this campaign when Hamas does not function as a governing body and certainly not as a military framework… It will take time,” he says.
Gallant adds that “at the same time, unfortunately, there are other threats, the first and most prominent of which is what is happening in the north,” referring to daily attacks by Hezbollah from Lebanon.