As the Israeli military’s response to the weekend’s Hamas terror attacks begins, the Israeli Air Force is launching a heavy aerial campaign against the Gaza Strip that has so already involved immense destruction to the crowded area. Among those structures destroyed in the dismal territory was the University of Gaza, which the Israeli military claimed was being used as a center of terror training and weapons production for Hamas.
Announcing the incident on X (formerly Twitter) and including a video of the bombing of the facility, Times of Israel military correspondent Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian said, “IDF says it has bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, ‘which serves as a central training center for Hamas engineers.'”
Continuing, Fabian added that the IDF claims the facility was a center of training and weapon production, writing, “According to the IDF, the university was ‘an important center of political and military power’ for Hamas and a ‘training institution for the development and production of weapons.’”
According to the IDF, the university was "an important center of political and military power" for Hamas and a "training institution for the development and production of weapons."
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) October 11, 2023
NBC News, in its report on the matter, noted that the University of Gaza had been targeted and destroyed by the IDF Air Force, but that it, as a news organization, was unable to independently confirm that the university campus had been used as a terrorist training camp and/or weapons production facility.
The destruction of the University of Gaza building comes amidst a much larger aerial retaliation campaign against Hamas targets within Gaza. The same Times of Israel journalist, Emanuel Fabian, noting the scope of the campaign so far, said, “IDF says it has carried out strikes against some 3,600 targets across the Gaza Strip, using more than 6,000 munitions.”
IDF says it has carried out strikes against some 3,600 targets across the Gaza Strip, using more than 6,000 munitions. pic.twitter.com/vCDbHGxV3r
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) October 12, 2023
"*" indicates required fields
The Times of Israel, reporting on the casualties caused by that aerial campaign, said, “The Hamas-run health ministry says 1,417 Palestinians have been killed and another 6,268 have been wounded in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.”
IDF Major General Itai Veruv, commenting on the horrific aftermath of the Hamas attack, said, “It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre. You see the babies, the mother, the father, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them. It’s something we used to imagine from our grandmothers, grandfathers in pogroms in Europe and other places.”
Meanwhile, French journalist Margot Haddad claims to have confirmed reports of Hamas having beheaded dozens of babies in a kibbutz, posting on X “That’s it, the information is out. It’s so macabre that no one wanted to reveal it until they had 100% confirmation. 🔺 Infants and children under 2 years old were beheaded by Hamas in the Kibbutz of Kfar Aza. It is a horror, a massacre. For those asking for the source. They are multiple: Israeli army, internal intelligence service and atrocious images which reached me and which I was able to cross-check. But the best source remains this: courageous journalists from the foreign press who were able to see / agreed to see with their own eyes the bodies in Kfar Aza.”
Featured image credit: By TSGT KEVIN J. GRUENWALDmodified b FOX 52 – commons file, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66381698