Israel recently eliminated a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist in Gaza who participated in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 invasion of southern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) said in a joint statement on Monday.
The terrorist, identified as Ahmad Mansour, was involved in planning and executing rocket launches into Israel during the war, the IDF added.
The Israeli Air Force struck more than 200 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past 72 hours, including “terrorist squads, rocket and sniper positions, weapons depots and buildings used for terrorist activity,” the statement continued.
Forces from the IDF’s Gaza Division operating in Rafah in southern Gaza destroyed terrorist infrastructure and discovered a weapons cache containing grenades, ammunition and other military equipment.
In northern Gaza, forces from the 252nd Division identified several terrorists in a building housing underground infrastructure, and carried out an aircraft strike against the site, according to the IDF.
On Saturday, Warrant Officer G’haleb Sliman Alnasasra, 35, a Bedouin tracker from the southern Israeli city of Rahat, was killed during an exchange of fire with Hamas terrorists in northern Gaza.
The incident took place near Beit Hanoun, where Hamas operatives emerged from a concealed tunnel and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at an IDF vehicle. A secondary explosive device was detonated shortly after, wounding several troops and fatally injuring Alnasasra. Three additional soldiers, including a female officer, a combat medic and another tracker, were seriously hurt and evacuated by helicopter to hospitals in Israel.
Alnasasra’s death marks the first Israeli combat casualty in Gaza since the collapse of the ceasefire and resumption of hostilities on March 18.
Alnasasra served in the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade as part of an elite tracker unit responsible for detecting threats and uncovering hidden terrorist infrastructure. His loss comes as Israeli forces expand a security buffer zone inside Gaza, now estimated to encompass more than 30% of the territory.
As of Sunday, 848 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault, including 411 during the ground campaign in Gaza.
Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, launched the deadliest single-day attack on Israel in the Jewish state’s history, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 more into the Gaza Strip. Of the latter, 147 have been returned to Israel alive in two separate rounds of ceasefire agreements, which included the release of thousands of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.
Jerusalem believes that out of the 59 remaining captives, 24 are still alive, including one Thai and one Nepali.