IDF Tallies ‘Significant Damage’ to Islamic Jihad

By Hamodia Staff

Damaged buildings in Gaza City following Israel’s Operation Breaking Dawn. (Attia Muhammed/Flash90)

YERUSHALAYIM — Senior IDF officers said on Tuesday that the military “significantly damaged Palestinian Islamic Jihad and its leadership” during the recent three days of fighting.

In a briefing to summarize the 66-hour Operation Breaking Dawn, officials told reporters that the IDF succeeded in destroying infrastructure including a tunnel into Israel they described as a “flagship” project, and some of the terror group’s military chiefs.

They also disclosed that the elimination on Friday of Tayseer al-Jabari, a PIJ commander who was in charge of the group’s rocket arsenal and was its primary liason to Hamas, was effected by small glide bombs that hit Jabari’s sixth-floor apartment in a 14-story tower in Gaza City. The munitions entered the seventh-floor wall at an angle, penetrated the ceiling of the sixth, and only then exploded, in order to minimize collateral damage, senior officers said.

The IDF said it struck a total of 170 targets, using fighter jets, armed drones, combat helicopters, and artillery.

The targets included 17 observation posts (six of which were manned by PIJ operatives), 45 rocket and mortar launching sites, eight military camps, eight weapon caches, six weapon production facilities, three targets related to the PIJ’s naval force, and the abovementioned “attack tunnel.”

Over the three days, 1,175 rockets and mortars were launched from the Gaza Strip at Israel. The Iron Dome anti-rocket system intercepted over 380 projectiles fired toward populated areas, at an unprecedented 97 percent success rate, the IDF said.

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