TEL AVIV: Israeli forces seized control over a Hamas harbor base in central Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces announced on Thursday.
In the combined raid of the navy, armour and engineering forces, along with air force support, about ten tunnel shafts were destroyed, and four buildings of associated terrorist infrastructure were destroyed, the IDF said.
Hamas used the facility to train its naval forces and to direct and carry out naval attacks, the IDF said. Under the cover of a civilian naval anchorage, Hamas took advantage of the place for the purpose of training and carrying out attacks, using civilian vessels and Gaza's naval police boats.
Israeli forces eliminated ten terrorists and cleared all the buildings in the area of the anchorage.
In addition, a monument glorifying the events of the Mavi Marmara raid of 2010 was toppled. Some of the fighters of the Israeli Navy's 13th flotilla who were involved in capturing the harbor also fought aboard the Mavi Marmara.
In 2010, the Israeli Navy intercepted a six-ship flotilla trying to symbolically break the Gaza blockade. Violent clashes broke out aboard the Mavi Marmara, the flotilla's largest ship. Ten Turkish Islamists, many of whom were armed, were killed. Turkey severed its ties with Israel over the affair.
On a number of occasions since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, the Israeli Navy disrupted attempts to smuggle Iranian weapons by sea to the Strip.