Israel at war day 324
-According to a new Intelligence report, Hamas yea terrorist Sinwar has abandoned the tunnels after almost being captured and is more recently hiding amongst civilians, disguised as a woman.
- Another soldier killed in Gaza bringing death toll to 340, Shlomo Yehonatan Hazut, 36, from Ashdod.
Another soldier was seriously wounded in the incident.
According to an initial IDF probe, the soldiers were hit by an explosive device planted on a road in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood.
-Hamas fired rockets into Gush Dan region,they were launched from Khan younis, rockets fell in open area.
- Sirens sound in Rishon Letziyon
- Israeli delegation returns from Cairo talks; officials said optimistic despite Hamas claiming to reject latest proposal
- BBC report the second wave of retaliatory attacks against Israel is expected to come from "another country."
- IDF announces the death of a navy sailor Yisrael David Moshe Ben-Shitrit,21 from Adam,who was killed after rocket remnants or shrapnel hit his patrol boat up north, off the Nahariya coast according to reports. 2 other soldiers were injured.
- Netanyahu says Israel’s preemptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon this morning was not “the end of the story.” “The IDF destroyed thousands of short-range rockets, and all of them were aimed at harming our citizens and our forces in the Galilee,” he adds. “In addition, the IDF intercepted all the drones that Hezbollah launched at strategic targets in the center of the country.”
NYT reports on the hunt for Sinwar
In January, Israeli and American officials thought they had caught a break in the hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men.
Israeli commandos raided an elaborate tunnel complex in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 31 based on intelligence that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, was hiding there, He had been, it turned out. But Mr. Sinwar had left the bunker beneath the city of Khan Younis just days earlier, leaving behind documents and stacks of Israeli shekels totaling about $1 million. The hunt went on, with a dearth of hard evidence on his whereabouts.
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American and Israeli officials said Mr. Sinwar abandoned electronic communications long ago, and he has so far avoided a sophisticated intelligence dragnet. He is believed to stay in touch with the organization he leads through a network of human couriers. How that system works remains a mystery.
Officials have set up a special unit inside the headquarters of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, and American spy agencies have been tasked with intercepting Mr. Sinwar’s communications. The United States has also provided ground-penetrating radar to Israel to help in the hunt for him and other Hamas commanders.
Killing or capturing Mr. Sinwar would undoubtedly have a dramatic impact on the war. American officials believe it would offer Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel a way to claim a significant military victory and potentially make him more willing to end military operations in Gaza.
Israeli officials said that all Hamas operatives hiding underground, even Mr. Sinwar, must occasionally come out of the tunnels for health reasons. But the tunnel network is so vast and complex — and Hamas fighters have such good intelligence about the whereabouts of Israeli troops — that Mr. Sinwar can sometimes come above ground without being discovered.
Mr. Sinwar eventually moved south to Khan Younis, the city where he was born, Israeli and American officials believe, and probably occasionally traveled from there to the city of Rafah through a stretch of tunnel.
He stayed one step ahead of his pursuers, who sometimes made boastful comments about how close they were to finding him. In late December, as Israeli military units began excavating tunnels in one area of the city, Mr. Gallant bragged to reporters that Mr. Sinwar “hears the bulldozers of the I.D.F. above him, and he will meet the barrels of our guns soon.”
It appears Mr. Sinwar fled the Khan Younis bunker in some haste, leaving the many piles of Israeli shekels behind.
The United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization, and Israel established channels to share information about the location of Mr. Sinwar and other top Hamas commanders, and the hostages.
the Americans have deployed ground-penetrating radar to help map the hundreds of miles of tunnels they believe are under Gaza, with new imagery combined with Israeli intelligence gathered from captured Hamas fighters and troves of documents to build out a more complete picture of the tunnel network.
One senior Israeli official said American intelligence support had been “priceless.”
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