Dramatic footage released Friday showed Israel Defense Forces soldiers facing off against Hamas terrorists inside a school — as the country’s defense minister vowed that the group’s hold in the Gaza Strip is finally “beginning to break.”
Members of the elite LOTAR Unit, along with the 188th Armored Brigadee’s 74th Battalion, encountered a Hamas cell in the remains of a school building in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood, the Times of Israel reported.
IDF fighters appeared to pursue the terrorists through the building in a tense, bullet-ridden standoff, the IDF clips showed.
“The terrorists tried to draw the forces into an ambush, with gunfire and explosives, and were eliminated by the troops of the LOTAR Unit and tank fire of the 74th Battalion,” the IDF said of the incident.
The troops later searched the school and discovered a tunnel shaft in one of the classrooms, the Times of Israel added, citing the IDF.
The tunnel — which connected to a nearby mosque — was allegedly used by Hamas operatives.
The intense footage was released shortly after Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attended a Hanukkah candle lighting with troops of the Border Defense Corps’ Caracal Battalion, the Times of Israel added.
After more than two months of war, Israel is seeing “signs that indicate [Hamas] is beginning to break in Gaza,” Gallant said, according to the outlet.
He also paid special tribute to female members of the IDF, given that the Caracal Battalion is a mixed-gender unit.
“It is impossible to ignore the strong, prominent and successful female presence [in the war]. Women have not really fought in the IDF since 1948, this is the first time this has happened, after 75 years, in massive fighting,” he told the troops.
Israel’s forces have been pursuing Hamas in Gaza since an estimated 3,000 terrorists stormed southern Israel and unleashed a nightmarish wave of violence that killed around 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7.
A weeklong cease-fire last month saw the release of over 100 of the civilian hostages that were taken on Oct. 7 – but fighting resumed when Israeli and Hamas negotiators clashed over the continued order of hostage releases.
On Friday evening local time, warning sirens sounded over Tel Aviv – indicating that rockets fired from the Gaza Strip were threatening the central part of the small nation, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The Iron Dome — Israel’s mobile air defense system — intercepted the rockets in the night sky, according to a video Times of Israel reporter Emmanuel Fabian shared on X.
Also on Friday, Israel confirmed that the military was gathering Palestinian men in northern Gaza for interrogation as they searched for Hamas militants.
The confirmation came one day after images emerged showing what appeared to be dozens of men stripped and kneeling or sitting in the streets with their hands bound behind their backs in the town of Beit Lahiya.
Israeli troops reportedly detained men and boys as young as 15 in a school that was converted into a shelter, United Nations’ monitors indicated.
The group is “military-aged men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have been evacuated weeks ago,” Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy said Friday.
More Hamas operatives also started to surrender to the IDF, military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, per the Times of Israel.
“We are engaged in fierce battles with Hamas terrorists, who hide underground. We are killing many terrorists, and seeing more and more terrorists surrendering in battle and turning themselves into our forces,” he said.
In the past 48 hours, the IDF arrested more than 200 suspects in Gaza, Hagari added.
“Dozens of them have been handed over for interrogation by the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 and Shin Bet in Israel, including Hamas commanders and Nukhba operatives,” he explained.
In central Gaza, Israeli planes dropped leaflets at refugee camps in Nuseirat and Maghazi on Friday.
“To Hamas leaders: A life for a life, an eye for an eye and whoever started is to blame. If you punish, then punish with the like of that wherewith you were afflicted,” the papers read, which combined verses from the Quran and a similar reading from the Old Testament.
Meanwhile, in New York, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss what it described as the “catastrophic situation” in the Gaza Strip, where at least 17,000 people are believed to have been killed in the retaliatory bombardment.
The meeting followed UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ move earlier this week to call upon the rarely-invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter to demand a permanent cease-fire.
“There is no possible justification for deliberately killing some 1,200 people, including 33 children, injuring thousands more and taking hundreds of hostages,” Guterres said of the Hamas attack at the tense Friday meeting, according to the official report.
“At the same time, the brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” he insisted.
Under the bombardment, Guterres added, the conditions for effective humanitarian aid delivery to those in the Gaza Strip “no longer exist.”
Several delegations — including Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates — echoed the calls for a cease-fire.
The United States, however, backed Israel’s concerns that a cease-fire would prolong Hamas’ “reign of terror” in the region.
“While the US strongly supports a durable peace in which both Israel and Palestine can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate cease-fire. This would only plant the seeds for the next war, because Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace, to see a two-state solution,” Deputy Permanent Representative Robert A. Wood said.
Wood also slammed the Security Council’s failure to condemn the events of Oct. 7.
“It underscores the fundamental disconnect between the discussions we have been having in this chamber and the realities on the ground,” he insisted.
The meeting adjourned at 12:20 p.m. ET with no new draft resolution on the crisis, though the council planned to reconvene at 5:30 p.m.
With Post wires