The IDF says reservists of the Kiryati Armored Brigade and 55th Paratroopers Brigade

The IDF says reservists of the Kiryati Armored Brigade and 55th Paratroopers Brigade operating in southern Gaza have killed many Hamas fighters of the terror group's northern and eastern Khan Younis battalions, and significantly damaged their command and control, preventing operatives from carrying out large-scale attacks on troops.

The IDF releases footage of the two reserve brigades operating in the Khan Younis area, killing Hamas gunmen in tunnels and detaining operatives of the terror group’s elite Nukhba force.

The commander of the Kiryati Brigade, Col. Mickey Sharvit, says that in their area of operations “there is no innocent infrastructure.”

“We encounter terror in almost every home, in hospitals and schools. Our forces even eliminated terrorists who emerged from an underground [tunnel] in a school,” he says.

The IDF says the reservist troops located and destroyed a Hamas tunnel shaft leading to an underground passage of several hundred meters in the Khan Younis area.

Sharvit says some 20 Hamas operatives, including a company commander, were killed by the IDF inside the tunnel.

Five members of the terror group’s elite Nukhba force escaped the tunnel and surrendered to troops, according to the IDF.

The IDF says the gunmen who surrendered told field interrogators that strikes on underground Hamas hideouts in the area killed many operatives, including two company commanders in Hamas’s northern and eastern Khan Younis battalions.

The commander of the 55th Brigade, Col. Oded Ziman, meanwhile, hails the “extraordinary” cooperation with the Israeli Air Force.

“As a brigade commander I never dreamed of such good and fast cooperation,” Ziman says, recalling an incident this morning in which an attack helicopter provided air support within two minutes of radioing in the request.