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At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, IDF Achieves War Goals with Precision
Khan Yunis. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – On Feb. 15, the IDF announced formally that it had begun operating in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, which like every other medical, educational and civilian site in Gaza served as a Hamas military hub.
As IDF special forces entered the complex, some 200 Hamas members surrendered without firing a shot.
The IDF began the operation with a call to the hospital’s director from Col. Moshe Tetro, head of the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, who is responsible for the IDF’s humanitarian efforts throughout the war.
“In the past month, the IDF has asked the residents of Khan Yunis to evacuate to safer areas, in the humanitarian areas of Al-Mawasi [in southern Gaza] and Deir al-Balah [in central Gaza]. We have information that proves that the Hamas terrorist organization is continuing its military activity in the Nasser hospital compound, and that the compound was used to hold Israeli hostages,” Tetro told the director.
Tetro called on Hamas to exit the site, as well as for thousands of Gazan civilians who had set up camp in and around the hospital to leave.
Speaking to journalists last week, Tetro said the Nasser operation was “inevitable, since Hamas repeatedly and systematically uses hospitals for their terrorist activities.”
Out of an estimated 10,500 Gazan civilians in the compound, the IDF evacuated around 8,000 before forces entered, Tetro assessed.
Once Israeli forces entered the hospital, he said, the IDF continued to work with medical staff to protect patients and move them out of combat zones. A “large amount” of water and food, including baby food, was also delivered by the IDF to those remaining in the facility, he said.
The IDF was in “close touch” with hospital staff regarding medical supplies, “and it is our understanding that there is no shortage of medical supplies at the moment,” he said.
During the operation, the hospital also received a generator from the IDF to ensure continued power supply to the Intensive Care Unit.
On Saturday, Feb. 23, a fault unrelated to the IDF operations was discovered in the hospital’s electrical infrastructure, and the IDF has brought in technicians to address it, said Tetro.
“Finally, in the days since the operation we have coordinated several convoys of ambulances and assisted in transferring patients… to more suitable places to receive treatments,” he said.
The IDF’s raid on Nasser hospital would have likely been considered impossible by many observers prior to the launch of Israel’s ground operation in Gaza on Oct. 27.
Yet today, it has become the norm, and with roughly three-quarters of Gaza under IDF control, the military has demonstrated that despite predictions of doom, it can operate in the most challenging urban warfare environment in the world.
With more than 10,000 Hamas terrorists killed and several thousand more injured, and growing numbers of key Hamas tunnels taken out of commission (the military does not seek to destroy every tunnel under Gaza), the IDF has removed roughly half of Hamas’s terror army from the battlefield, including tens of Hamas battalion and company commanders.
The IDF is gradually moving into the more targeted mopping-up phase in the north and central Gaza. While there will always be terrorists in Gaza, the IDF is steadily achieving Israel’s war aim of shattering Hamas as an organized terror army and subsequently, as a political regime.
Despite the vast complexities of waging war in the Strip, the IDF has demonstrated that it has developed the tools to make consistent progress, while ensuring humanitarian supply lines and fully observing international laws of war.
Addressing the issue of humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza, Tetro said that on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom Crossing, there are “more than 450 trucks waiting for the international organizations to take the goods and to distribute them inside Gaza. We are ready and willing to facilitate the entrance of tens, if not hundreds of trucks every day.”
He added, “Unfortunately, today and yesterday, the United Nations didn’t show up to work. So as you probably have heard me say before, the bottleneck is not the Israeli side.”
The post At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, IDF Achieves War Goals with Precision first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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