The Israel Defense Forces on Monday eliminated three armed terrorists who had crossed the ceasefire line in southern Gaza to gather intelligence on troop movements, the military announced on Monday evening.
Troops of the 188th Armored Brigade “identified four armed terrorists in the Yellow Line area who approached the soldiers in a manner that posed an immediate threat,” according to the IDF statement.
The Israeli Air Force “eliminated three terrorists and neutralized one additional terrorist in order to remove the threat.”
During searches of the terrorists’ remains, troops discovered weapons, as well as “military equipment intended for intelligence gathering on IDF soldiers’ activity in the area,” the military added.
The IDF remains deployed in the Strip in accordance with the U.S.-brokered truce deal “and will continue to operate to remove any immediate threat,” the statement concluded.
The Yellow Line is a boundary established by the Israel Defense Forces as part of the first phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal with the Hamas terrorist organization that went into effect in October.
Concrete barriers topped with a yellow-painted post mark the area to which the Israeli military has withdrawn under the agreement. The Yellow line leaves the IDF in control of some 53% of the enclave.
On Sunday, the Israeli Air Force “struck and eliminated” a terrorist who had crossed the Yellow Line in the southern Gaza Strip, threatening soldiers stationed there, according to the IDF.
The day prior, the military eliminated three terrorists in three separate incidents in the southern and northern part of the Strip, it said in a statement over the weekend.
The truce plan brokered by the Trump administration has hit an impasse as Hamas continues to refuse to give up its weapons.
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Dec. 6 repeated calls for Israel’s destruction, rejecting U.S.- and U.N.-backed demands to disarm the Iranian-supported terrorist group and demilitarize the Gaza Strip.
“The resistance and its weapons are the honor and pride of the ummah [the Islamic nation],” Mashaal told an anti-Israel summit in Turkey. “A thousand statements are not worth a single projectile of iron.”
The terrorist leader also dismissed “all forms of guardianship, mandate and re-occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and all of Palestine,” rejecting another key part of President Donald Trump’s plan, which received unanimous support of the U.N. Security Council on Nov. 17.
An Israeli official told JNS on Saturday that “Hamas has no choice but to disarm, and it will happen either the easy way or the hard way,” adding, “The terror group committed to President Trump’s plan, which includes laying down their weapons. The policy is clear: The terror group will be disarmed one way or another.”
Following a failed terrorist projectile launch from the Gaza City area on Thursday, the IDF carried out strikes across the coastal enclave, killing at least six terrorists and destroying military infrastructure.
The attacks led to a “significant degradation of Hamas’s and additional terrorist organizations’ operational capabilities and abilities to execute terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops,” the IDF stated.
In a separate incident on Thursday, IDF troops operating in the Jabalia area located a launcher with two loaded rockets that were ready to be fired toward the territory of the State of Israel, the military stated.
