{"id":108148,"date":"2025-07-31T17:56:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T17:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/108148\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T17:56:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T17:56:15","slug":"in-beit-hanoun-for-5th-time-officers-say-hamas-battalion-to-be-destroyed-within-a-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/108148\/","title":{"rendered":"In Beit Hanoun for 5th time, officers say Hamas battalion to be destroyed ‘within a week’"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip \u2014 It is now the fifth time that the Israel Defense Forces is operating in the town of Beit Hanoun, located on the northeastern edge of the Gaza Strip, just across from Israel\u2019s southern city of Sderot.<\/p>\n

But this time \u2014 almost two years into the ground offensive \u2014 IDF commanders say their work to destroy Hamas\u2019s crippled and surrounded \u201cbattalion\u201d in Beit Hanoun is almost done.<\/p>\n

The Hamas battalion in Beit Hanoun now only consists of a handful of operatives, and the vast majority of the terror group\u2019s tunnels in the town have been demolished, according to officers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that within a week we can finish, and what I mean by finish is that there are no more tunnels,\u201d said Col. Netanel Shamaka, the commander of the Givati Infantry Brigade, to reporters during an escorted visit to Beit Hanoun on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

In the past two months, the military has razed nearly every single structure in Beit Hanoun, amid a hunt for Hamas\u2019s tunnels and other infrastructure in the area.<\/p>\n

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No hostages are believed by the IDF to be held by Hamas here.<\/p>\n

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Razed homes in northern Gaza\u2019s Beit Hanoun, July 30, 2025. (Emanuel Fabian\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mission isn\u2019t to destroy buildings for the sake of it; the mission is to destroy Hamas infrastructure,\u201d Shamaka said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe 10 buildings will remain standing [when we finish], which belong to civilians and there are no tunnel entrances in their homes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Givati commander said that in Beit Hanoun, \u201ceverywhere we dug we found tunnels.\u201d<\/p>\n

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An IDF soldier is seen next to armored vehicles in northern Gaza\u2019s Beit Hanoun, July 30, 2025. (Emanuel Fabian\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

One main tunnel route ran across Beit Hanoun, underneath schools, medical clinics, homes and other civilian sites, with dozens of small underground routes branching off it, Shamaka said.<\/p>\n

The main tunnel, which had entrances underneath the homes of all the Hamas commanders in the town, also connected Beit Hanoun with Beit Lahiya to the west and to Jabalia to the south, he said.<\/p>\n

When the IDF launched the fresh offensive in Beit Hanoun, troops reached the tunnel\u2019s junctions and cut off the routes leading outside the town, surrounding the few dozen Hamas operatives not only above ground, but also below it.<\/p>\n

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IDF troops of the Givati Brigade stand over a tunnel shaft in northern Gaza\u2019s Beit Hanoun, July 30, 2025. (Emanuel Fabian\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are locating, mapping [the tunnels out] and destroying them. This led to the elimination of many terrorists who were hiding underground,\u201d Shamaka said.<\/p>\n

During attempts to uncover the tunnel routes, combat engineers killed \u2014 almost by accident \u2014 a Hamas company commander who had been wanted since the October 7, 2023, onslaught, alongside other operatives in the Beit Hanoun Battalion.<\/p>\n

After digging down and hitting the tunnel, troops of the 7107th Reserve Combat Engineering Battalion dropped an explosive charge inside.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Troops of the Givati Brigade fire from a Namer APC in northern Gaza\u2019s Beit Hanoun, July 30, 2025. (Emanuel Fabian\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

The blast killed Mohammed Sahwil, a company commander in the Beit Hanoun Battalion; Akram Abu Jarad, a platoon commander; and several other operatives.<\/p>\n

Their bodies were only located later when the combat engineers sent down a drone to inspect the tunnel, according to IDF officers. Inside the tunnel, the troops also recovered weapons and intelligence documents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe carried out several tactical actions to kill the enemy in its tunnels. This is one of the results,\u201d Lt. Col. \u201cGimmel,\u201d the commander of the 7107th Battalion \u2014 who can only be identified by his first initial in Hebrew due to security concerns \u2014 told reporters at the site of the razed tunnel.<\/p>\n

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The view of damaged homes in northern Gaza\u2019s Beit Hanoun, July 30, 2025. (Emanuel Fabian\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

\u201cA tunnel ran here under our feet, with living terrorists, only a few days ago. We identified their elimination and destroyed the entire tunnel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The IDF believes there are only four or five remaining terror operatives in Beit Hanoun, as the majority were either killed during the fighting or fled, like the battalion commander, Hussein Fayyad.<\/p>\n

Before the war, the Beit Hanoun Battalion \u2014 like the other 23 Hamas battalions across the Strip \u2014 consisted of over 1,000 operatives.<\/p>\n

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IDF troops of the Givati Brigade are seen in northern Gaza\u2019s Beit Hanoun, July 30, 2025. (Emanuel Fabian\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

Fayyad, the Beit Hanoun Battalion commander, was targeted in a recent strike, but the IDF is unsure if he was killed. Previously, the military declared him dead in a strike, only to backtrack after he was seen out in public during a ceasefire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat kept Hamas standing for a year and 10 months in Beit Hanoun was only the tunnels,\u201d Shamaka said. \u201c[The operatives] quickly went down into the tunnels that [Hamas] dug and hid there. The moment we managed to reach the main routes, they started to come out and we struck them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Col. Netanel Shamaka, the commander of the Givati Brigade, speaks to reporters in northern Gaza\u2019s Beit Hanoun, July 30, 2025. (Emanuel Fabian\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, in the past year, [the Beit Hanoun Battalion] caused a not-small number of casualties to our forces, and the assessment is that within a week we will be finished with Beit Hanoun,\u201d Shamaka said.<\/p>\n

But he stressed that nothing is absolute. There still may be tunnels that the military is unaware of, and \u201cterrorists could come from Gaza City overground\u201d to Beit Hanoun and launch an attack on Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll need to be here\u201d to prevent that, the Givati commander added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip \u2014 It is now the fifth time that the Israel Defense Forces is operating…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":108149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[99,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-108148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-israel","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114949140516224632","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}