Israel Defense Forces troops operating in Gaza City’s Daraj and Tuffah districts discovered components used by Hamas to produce precision-guided missiles and other strategic weapons with direct assistance from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the military announced on Sunday.
Nahal Brigade troops found “components proving terrorists of the Hamas terror organization learned under Iranian guidance how to operate and build precision components and strategic weapons,” the IDF said on X, sharing photos showing a rocket engine and warhead.
The Iran-backed weapons manufacturing plant was discovered as part of an operation to expose a 330-foot terror tunnel, added the army.
“Over the last few days, we encountered the enemy and many [terror] squads, infrastructure and boody-trapped houses,” said Nahal Brigade Commander Col. Yair Zuckerman.
Forces also discovered many terror tunnels, as well as rocket launching pads used to target the greater Tel Aviv area and Israeli communities near the Gaza border, said Zuckerman.
Iran supports Hamas by supplying it with funding, intelligence, weapons and technological knowledge, and the Biden administration has described the Islamic Republic as being “complicit” in the Oct. 7 attacks.
As many as 500 men affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad trained in the Islamic Republic leading up to Oct. 7, The Wall Street Journal reported in late October. The exercises reportedly took place in September, at which time terrorists received specialized combat training.
On Dec. 27, Tehran claimed that Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre was a response to the United States’ 2020 targeted killing in Baghdad of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
“The Al-Aqsa Flood was one of the acts of revenge for the assassination of General Soleimani by the U.S. and the Zionists,” IRGC spokesman Brig. Gen. Ramezan Sharif told Iran’s state-run ISNA news agency, using Hamas’s name for the murder spree.
