The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday that it has killed 8,000 Hamas members since the terrorist group launched the war on October 7, and that is has killed 2,000 in the past three weeks alone, since Hamas broke a week-long truce with Israel.
IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in his evening briefing (IDF translation from Hebrew):
Our forces continue to intensify ground operations in northern and southern Gaza. Since the end of the operational pause on ground operations in Gaza, our forces have eliminated over 2,000 terrorists from the air, sea, and land. We have increased the number of soldiers fighting in eastern Khan Yunis and are operating there determinedly with five infantry brigades and combat engineering forces, focusing on underground combat to drive out the terrorists, fight them as they emerge, and drain this space of Hamas terrorism.
The Times of Israel added: “This brings the military’s estimates of Hamas fighters killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war to around 8,000. Another 1,000 Hamas terrorists were killed in Israel on October 7, during the terror group’s onslaught.”
Hamas claimed Thursday that 20,000 Palestinians had been killed since the start of the war. Its estimate was quoted widely by the media, despite the fact that Hamas did not distinguish between terrorists and civilians; between civilians killed by Hamas rocket misfires and those killed when Israel targeted terrorists; and between terrorists killed in Gaza and terrorists killed during their attack on Israel.
Israel had previously said that the ratio of civilian casualties to terrorist casualties was roughly two-to-one; if the Hamas estimate of total Palestinian casualties is correct, then Israel would appear to be improving that ratio to 1.5-to-one.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
