How Many Hamas Fighters are Left?
Since Israel's invasion of Gaza their stated goal has been the complete destruction of Gaza. This raises the obvious question. How much of Hamas is still left? How many Fighters have been eliminated?
Since Israel’s ground offensive of Gaza, How much of Hama’s capabilities are left? Israel has stated the conflict will not end until Hamas has been completely dismantled so this is a valuable question to look into.
I want to attempt to answer this by looking at the open source information available which includes reports from both the IDF and the United States as well as conflicting reports from critics of those sources. It’s important for us to weigh different factors and be cognizant of the source of the each piece of information.
Since Israel's ground offensive into Gaza The IDF claims to have killed a total of 13,000 Hamas fighters. Given the typical kind of rates of attrition we normally see in past wars throughout history, we can conservatively estimate twice that many are wounded. And this lines up with what the IDF reports roughly which is 10,000 enemy wounded and about 2,300 captured. Israel claims to have dismantled 20 of the 24 battalions. They specifically chose the word “dismantled” to distinguish between totally destroyed. Dismantled means there maybe a few thousand fighters left throughout Gaza but these groups are only capable of carrying out local attacks according to the IDF. This would indicate that they’ve killed, wounded or captured about 26,000 fighters.
By the IDF’s own estimates Hamas strength was at 30,000 fighters before the start of the war. Israeli defense forces claim the final 6,000 to 8,000 hamas fighters are split between the remaining 4 battalions in Rafah. These final 4 battalions are still operational meaning at this point they could pull off larger coordinated strikes. Israel says the “most wanted” members of Hamas leadership as well as over 100 hostages are located here in a tunnel network underground.
#ISRAEL #WAR #GAZA