Israel continues to strike at Hamas and Hezbollah
Israel continues to strike hard at Hamas and Hezbollah, the armed groups it is at war with both in the Gaza Strip and on the Lebanese border.
The Israeli army unleashed a large-scale military campaign against Hamas following the Palestinian extremist group's attacks on 7 October 2023 on Israeli territory that left around 1,200 people dead and 250 kidnapped.
The Israeli military operation in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip was launched shortly after the horrific attacks and continues, having already claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Various irreconcilable enemies of Israel, such as the armed Shiite militia of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran (the great standard-bearer of the Shiite branch of Islam in the Middle East and a country that has declared on several occasions that its goal is the elimination of the Israeli state), also reacted by attacking Israel with missile and drone offensives. The Israel Defence Forces also responded with an armed response to these attacks in different episodes.
The main targets of the Israeli army's offensives, supported by national intelligence services, have been the top leadership of both Hamas and Hezbollah. In recent months, leaders of both formations, such as Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah, Yahya Sinwar, Mohamed Deif, Saleh Al Arouri, Hassem Safieddine, Fuad Shukr, etc., have been killed in Israeli military operations aimed at dismantling the Palestinian formation and the Lebanese Shiite armed group.
Now it is the turn of Hassan Al Mallah, leader of the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and Muhammad Khalil Alian, commander of the anti-tank missile unit of the Shiite group Hezbollah.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) killed in the West Bank, Palestine, a senior Hamas official, Hassan Al Mallah, leader of the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian organisation that dominates the Gaza Strip, in an operation they carried out in the Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank itself, amid increased incursions by Israeli troops into the territory since the attacks carried out by the Palestinian group on Israeli territory on 7 October 2023.
A joint operation by the Israel Defence Forces and the Shin Bet (intelligence service) ‘eliminated’ a ‘key Hamas infrastructure operative’ in Tulkarem ‘who planned to carry out attacks in the immediate period’, the Israeli security forces said.
According to the Israeli statement, ‘Hassan Al Mallah worked to promote attacks alongside Islam Odeh, who was killed on 26 October in an operation in Tulkarem, and Zahi Awfi, who was killed in an airstrike also in Tulkarem on 3 October and was responsible for planning major attacks’.
Israel also killed another Hezbollah commander in Qalaouiyeh in southern Lebanon. The Israeli army announced on Thursday the death of Muhammad Jalil Alian, commander of the Shi'ite Hezbollah group's anti-tank missile unit in the Qalaouiyeh area, some 11 kilometres from the border with Israel.
Alian was killed in an Israeli Air Force bombing raid on Monday, an official military statement confirmed.
Israeli military operations against Hamas and Hezbollah continue as part of the ongoing armed clashes in the Gaza Strip and along the Israel-Lebanon border. ‘The air force struck approximately 150 Hezbollah and Hamas targets in Gaza and Lebanon,’ the armed forces announced in the last hours, assuring that among them were command centres, arms depots, observation posts or rocket launchers.
The Israeli Air Force also bombed pro-Iranian group positions in Mazraat El Yahoudiyeh in the northern Lebanese region of Tyre, claiming that militiamen from the Hezbollah air unit fired a rocket from there at an army plane, which was not damaged.
