The Air Force overnight Thursday eliminated Hamas Major General Mahmoud Salah, Director General of the Police in the Gaza Strip, and his deputy, Brigadier General Hussam Mustafa Shawan “Abu Shurooq.” Eleven were killed and 12 injured in the bombing attack in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younes, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Fresh images from the site attacked by the IAF early Thursday morning:
من موقع المجزرة التي ارتكبها الاحتلال في مواصي خانيونس وارتقى على إثرها 11 شهــيدا بينهم أطفال ومدير عام الشرطة بقطاع غزة اللواء محمود صلاح ومعاونه العميد حسام مصطفى شهوان. pic.twitter.com/TjPPrEb7U1
— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) January 2, 2025
Salah was appointed head of the Hamas police force in 2019, replacing Tayseer al-Batch, who was injured in an Israeli attack a few years earlier. In an interview with PA Arab media in 2021, the Hamas police chief stated that his force included ten thousand officers.
Shawan served as head of Hamas’s investigations unit in the police. In the past, he also served as the district commander of Khan Younes.
This is the most significant assassination operation targeting senior Hamas civilian figures since the start of the war. According to Hamas’s propaganda office, more than 723 police and security personnel working on behalf of the terrorist organization have been killed since the beginning of the war. Several Hamas police station commanders were eliminated, along with key members of the terrorists’ investigations apparatus.
Since the beginning of the war, Hamas police officers functioned as terrorists and threatened IDF forces operating in their precincts. The Khan Younes area has seen many members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam military wing killed, and Hamas’s military infrastructure being dismantled. The Hamas police officers were used to control Gaza’s civilian population.
Gazan Arabs have complained that Hamas police officers are taking over supply convoys and brutally abusing anyone suspected of stealing the free goods distributed by international agencies and sold by Hamas. The terrorist group has been filling its coffers with the money it charges the staring Gazans, and using the funds to recruit an estimated 10,000 new youths into its ranks.
Hamas police have released footage of street trials of thieves carried out by masked men.
Hamsawi Masked militia captures and brands men (Thief) on their back after they tried to storm the warehouse where they sell and overprice aid.
I wonder what made men “steal food”… And the un-proportional punishment.Src: Nisr Palestine TG pic.twitter.com/N1xQqPBo1c
— Mo Ghaoui (@moghaoui) July 5, 2024
