The Israeli military has detained a senior Hamas operative allegedly involved in the kidnap and murder of three boys in 2014 during its ongoing operation at Al-Shifa Hospital, it said.
The Israel Defense Forces said that, along with the Israeli Security Agency, it arrested Mahmoud Qawasmeh, who it alleged to be a planner and financier of the infrastructure that carried out the boys' kidnapping and murder.
In 2014, high school students Naftali Frankel, Gil-ad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrah were abducted in the area of Gush Etzion in the occupied West Bank while trying to hitch a ride home.
Qawasmeh had been deported to the Gaza Strip as part of an exchange in 2011 in which hundreds of Palestinian prisoners were released in return for the freedom of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped by Hamas and taken into Gaza in 2006.
The IDF said Qawasmeh had been involved in “directing terrorist activities of Hamas” in the West Bank, “including a number of shooting terror attacks carried out in recent years.”
The IDF has also released new video of its operations around Al-Shifa. It said weapons had been located and about 350 suspects apprehended during the raid.
