The Israeli army announced, this evening, Tuesday, that it had notified the families of 31 Israeli prisoners held by resistance factions in the Gaza Strip that they had been killed in captivity. While he claimed to have found documents clarifying the relationship between the Iranian authorities and the Hamas movement, pointing to extensive operations carried out by Israeli army in the northern Gaza Strip, including in the Beach Camp area.

The disclosure of these data comes in a press conference by the Israeli army spokesman, Daniel Hagari, following a report by the American newspaper The New York Times, which stated that estimates by intelligence circles in Israel indicate that more than a fifth of the Israeli detainees in Gaza were killed during the war waged by the army on the sector.

Hagari claimed that Israeli army “found an official document issued by Hamas and dated 2020, which includes details of the financial amounts that were transferred from Iran between 2014 and 2020 for the benefit of Hamas, and for the personal use of the movement’s leader, Yahya Sinwar. The total amount amounts to $150 million from Iran to Hamas.

Among the information that the Israeli army spokesman reviewed, considering it “indicative of the direct relationship between Iran and Hamas,” what he claimed was a “safe” that the occupation army found “in an underground complex,” and he claimed that it “contained more than 20 million shekels in cash, which was nitended for personal use.

Earlier, the New York Times quoted four Israeli military officials (which it did not name) that a “secret assessment” conducted by the Israeli army indicated that at least 32 of the remaining detainees in Gaza were killed during the war. The officials explained that the Israeli army learned to verify the validity of intelligence information indicating that at least 20 other detainees may have also been killed during the war.

According to the report, this number is higher than any previous number announced by the Israeli authorities regarding dead detainees. The newspaper suggested that this announcement would “exacerbate anger in Israel,” as doubt increases about the government’s ability to manage the file of Israeli detainees, especially with more than 123 days having passed since the war.

On Tuesday evening, the Israeli army announced the killing of a deputy battalion commander in a battle in the northern Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll announced since the beginning of the war on October 7 to 563. The army said, in a statement, that the dead man was an officer with the rank of major, aged 30 years old and from Rehovot.

The statement explained that the dead man held the position of deputy commander of the 601st Battalion of the 401st Brigade in the Combat Engineering Corps, and was killed in a battle in the northern Gaza Strip, thus raising the death toll of the occupation army to 226 officers and soldiers killed since the start of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip on October 27 last.

According to the army’s data, which is updated daily on its website, the toll of those injured in its ranks as of Tuesday reached 2,828 officers and soldiers, including 1,304 since the start of the ground operation. The data shows that 354 soldiers are receiving treatment in hospitals, including 25 in serious condition.