Israel raids Hamas compounds in Rafah

The Israeli military pressed operations in the Rafah area on Sunday, destroying two Hamas compounds in the southern Gaza city and seizing numerous weapons, the Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday.

In Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood, Israeli forces raided a Hamas compound that served as a training ground for Hamas’s Tel al-Sultan Brigade. Soldiers located the office of the brigade’s commander, Mahmoud Hamdan, along with weapons storage facilities and several tunnel shafts. The IDF is in the process of examining and destroying the tunnel shafts and dismantling the compound.

In the area of the compound, soldiers also raided the office of the Commander of Rocket and Missile Fire in Hamas’ Rafah Brigade, Yasser Nett, who has been responsible for multiple rocket attacks into Israel and against Israeli troops in Gaza.

Parallel to that, soldiers raiding a second Hamas compound in the Rafah area seized large quantities of weapons and intelligence documents and uncovered more tunnel shafts.

Meanwhile, during the weekend, Israeli forces located and destroyed weapons caches inside a Gaza university and in residential homes, as well as a rocket launching site placed inside a humanitarian zone.

At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 116 remaining hostages, more than 30 are believed dead.