\n<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israeli special forces captured the head of Hamas’s internal security service in a ground operation in Gaza.<\/b><\/p>\n
Netanyahu said the man, whom he did not name, was “engaged in attempts to restore Hamas’s governance in Gaza and in deception concerning the demilitarisation of the Strip”.<\/p>\n
Israel’s military and Shin Bet security service said a special forces unit arrested him in Gaza City on Tuesday and then took him to Israel for questioning.<\/p>\n
Israeli air strikes carried out during the raid killed at least four Palestinians, including two children and a woman, medics said. Hamas condemned Israel’s actions as a “grave crime” and violation of their ceasefire.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday morning, Palestinians in the crowded Katiba area of western Gaza City reported heavy Israeli bombardment, with two vehicles hit and turned to wreckage.<\/p>\n
Videos captured chaotic scenes, with the sound of gunfire and the aftermath of strikes.<\/p>\n
“A jeep stopped in the middle of the street and started firing indiscriminately left and right. It carried on firing at us like rain for more than 15 minutes,” Wafika al-Helou, who lives in a tent in the area, told AFP news agency. “It was terrifying.”<\/p>\n
Another witness, Mutaz Abu Asr, said there were five or six strikes in less than three minutes.<\/p>\n
Palestinian media reported that Israeli special forces and Israel-backed Palestinian militiamen opposed to Hamas entered the area, but that their presence was discovered. Some Israeli media suggested that only a local armed militia operated on the ground.<\/p>\n
A Palestinian security source told the BBC the target of the Israeli operation was a senior official in the Hamas internal security service.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office, Ismail al-Thawabta, said: “An Israeli special forces unit attempted to carry out a security operation in Gaza City, but the unit was exposed while carrying out the mission.”<\/p>\n
The ensuing Israeli strikes “resulted in a number of people being killed and others injured, in addition to the deaths of several members of the special forces unit”, he added.<\/p>\n
Later, Hamas issued a statement saying that the Israeli raid and strikes in a densely populated area constituted “a serious crime, a deliberate disregard for the lives of civilians, and an extension of the brutal war of annihilation against our people in the Gaza Strip”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n