Israeli forces destroy network of Hamas weapons factories in civilian areas

Tel Aviv [Israel], January 19

Israeli soldiers destroyed a network of Hamas weapons factories located along a stretch of Gaza’s main highway, the Israel Defence Forces announced on Thursday.

The facilities, located along the Salah al-Din Road, consist of weapons factories above and below ground, where rockets, weapons and ammunition were produced. The sites were connected by dozens of tunnel shafts.

The shafts were also connected to a larger tunnel network so the weapons could be delivered to terror squads across the Strip. Some of the shafts were divided into areas for production or storage.

Israeli forces found weapons production facilities in other areas of Gaza as well.

In the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, soldiers exposed dozens of workshops for the production of weapons, including large quantities of arms and equipment, as well as tunnel shafts. Troops operating in an area of central Gaza between the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps found machines and containers for the production of chemical substances along with hundreds of long-range rockets.

The IDF added that a combat team conducted “operational activity” against Hamas’s Bureij Battalion’s infrastructure located in and near civilian buildings and government institutions, seizing money, maps, weapons and propaganda material.

At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. The number of men, women, children, soldiers and foreigners held captive in Gaza by Hamas is now believed to be 136. Other people remain unaccounted for as Israeli authorities continue to identify bodies and search for human remains.