The spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, Abu Ubaida, announced on Sunday that members of the brigades were able to capture Israeli occupation army soldiers during an operation in the Gaza Strip.
Abu Ubaida said, in a televised speech, that Al-Qassam fighters “carried out a complex operation on Saturday afternoon, in the northern Gaza Strip, where they lured a Zionist force into one of the tunnels in the Jabalia camp.”
He added that Al-Qassam fighters "trapped this force in an ambush inside the tunnel and at its entrance, and were able to engage its members from zero distance."
Abu Ubaida explained that when a support force arrived, Al-Qassam members attacked this force with explosive devices, stressing that they "killed, wounded, and captured all members of the force, and seized its military equipment."
Abu Ubaida’s speech included video scenes showing the removal of one of the bodies of those killed by the Israeli occupation army, who were detained in the operation inside a tunnel, in addition to a helmet, military clothing, and weapons, pointing out that this was “what was allowed to be published.”
In his speech, Abu Ubaida said, “The enemy government continues its blind and absurd policy of revenge and destruction and moves from failure to failure, the last of which was in the Jabalia camp and the city of Rafah” in the southern Gaza Strip. He added that their fighters “continue to teach the occupation lessons on the battlefields.”
Abu Ubaida pointed out that they “carried out dozens of operations against enemy forces over a period of more than two weeks in Rafah, Jabalia, and the city of Beit Hanoun (north).”
He pointed out that “the enemy army is marketing the exhumation of the remains as a military and moral achievement.” Abu Ubaida considered that “the occupation forces are digging up the remains of their captives for the sake of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s personal accounts.”
Amid a stifling siege imposed by Israel on Gaza for 18 years, and an escalation of its violations against Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, launched a surprise attack on Israeli military sites and settlements adjacent to the Strip on October 7, during which they captured about 239 people.
Later, the factions exchanged 105 of these prisoners, some of whom were foreign workers, for many Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, during a temporary humanitarian truce that lasted 7 days and ended in early December 2023. While Tel Aviv speaks of the remaining 121 of these prisoners in the hands of the factions, the latter confirms that they were killed. Dozens of them were caused by Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip.
With the mediation of Qatar, Egypt and the United States, Hamas and Israel have been conducting faltering indirect negotiations for months to reach an agreement to exchange prisoners and stop the war on Gaza.
Within this mediation, on May 6, Hamas announced its acceptance of an Egyptian-Qatari proposal to exchange prisoners and stop the war with Israel, but the latter rejected it. On the same day, it launched an attack on the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, and took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing the next day.
In light of this escalation, the delegations of Hamas and Israel left the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on May 9, after participating in the last negotiating round, without announcing that an agreement had been reached. Earlier Saturday, Israel said that negotiations with Hamas regarding reaching a prisoner exchange deal and a ceasefire will resume next week, following a meeting in Paris on Friday, which included the head of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, David Barnea, and the director of the CIA. William Burns, and Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Qatar Mohammed Abdul Rahman Al Thani
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip that has left more than 116,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, most of them children and women, and about 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of children and the elderly.
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