Gaza City raid: Hamas security chief arrested
An Israeli backed militia raided the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City under Israeli air cover. Hamas's internal security chief was arrested, and doctors report eight civilians killed.
Israel’s military backed a raid by an Israeli sponsored militia into the densely populated Rimal neighborhood of western Gaza City on Tuesday, September 1, striking the area from the air to cover the operation. According to an Israeli security source, the raid ended with the arrest of the chief of Hamas’s internal security apparatus, while Palestinian doctors say at least three civilians were killed in the same part of the city. It is the first time a militia backed by Israel has pushed this deep into Gaza City itself with open Israeli air support since the war began, marking a departure from the pattern Israeli operations have followed so far.
What happened in the Rimal neighborhood
According to initial Palestinian reports, a unit entered the Rimal and Katiba area in a van and on motorcycles, aiming to locate and arrest a senior Hamas official. Hamas forces detected the unit, and a gun battle broke out. Israel’s military says it then struck several targets across Gaza City to cover its unit’s withdrawal and neutralize threats to the security forces involved. The military said none of its personnel were hurt in the clash. It did not specify whether regular Israeli soldiers took part in the raid itself or whether it was carried out solely by members of the Israeli funded and armed Palestinian militia, which has in recent months received IDF air cover with increasing frequency during operations inside built up parts of the city.
Who was arrested
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that a senior Hamas figure had been arrested. An Israeli security source later specified that the man was the head of Hamas’s internal security apparatus, the body responsible within the group for internal control and detecting infiltration. Katz announced the arrest in these words:
A short while ago, a senior Hamas terrorist was arrested.
In a separate statement on the course of operations in the city, Katz added:
Even as we stand here, our forces’ activity in Gaza City continues without pause. That is our policy: we do not wait for threats, we hunt down Hamas terrorists.
The two statements from the defense minister were issued separately, at different times, and the Times of Israel did not merge them into a single quote in its live coverage.
Civilian casualties
Palestinian doctors, cited by the BBC, said two children and a woman were killed in the incident in western Gaza City. Another child was killed in a separate incident in central Gaza, outside the immediate area of the Rimal raid. Palestinian sources said during the day that the number of identified dead from the series of strikes had risen to eight. A local source told the BBC that the target of the operation is believed to have been the senior Hamas security official, which matches the Israeli security source’s later confirmation that the group’s internal security chief had been arrested.
Footage from the scene, circulating online through the morning, showed chaotic scenes: the sound of automatic gunfire and the aftermath of the airstrikes, including a destroyed vehicle in the Rimal neighborhood itself, where the operation began.
A changing pattern
Israel’s operations in Gaza City so far have mostly consisted of airstrikes on individual targets or ground incursions by armored units along the city’s edges. A militia raid, in a civilian van and on motorcycles, into the heart of a populated neighborhood, followed by air support to cover the withdrawal, marks a different tactic, closer to an intelligence operation than a conventional military push. As of this report, Israel’s military had not released the identity of the man arrested or an estimate of the total number wounded, and Hamas had not yet officially responded to the arrest of its security chief.
