Press TV exclusive: Palestinian official says resistance inflicted ‘heavy losses’ on Israel

The resistance front has inflicted “heavy losses” on Israel despite "limited military equipment," a member of The Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement told Press TV, noting that the Tel Aviv regime has “partly acknowledged ” the defeat.

Ali Abu Shahin, a member of the political bureau of the Islamic Jihad, said in an exclusive interview with Press TV’s Face to Face that the Israeli regime is “underreporting its losses.”

“Despite its limited military equipment the Palestinian resistance has inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli enemy, part of which the regime has admitted,” he said.

According to Abu Shahin, the Israeli regime is “struggling” not to reveal its combat losses to “keep up soldiers and settlers’ spirit.”

“The more Israeli assaults against the Palestinian nation and the Gaza strip, the more losses the regime will suffer.”

According to reports by Israeli media, so far over 230 Israeli forces have been killed since October 7, 2023, when the regime unleashed the war on Gaza in response to Operation al-Aqsa Storm by the territory’s resistance movements.

Gaza’s resistance movements say the Tel Aviv regime gravely underreports the number of its casualties as a means of avoiding public backlash and preserving the morale of its forces.

The resistance groups also say that the regime has fallen short of realizing any of the goals it has been seeking to achieve through the war, including the occupation of Gaza and defeating the resistance.

In January, Yitzhak Barik, an Israeli general warned that the regime has failed to meet its “unrealistic” task of “destroying Hamas” and is sinking into the “mud of Gaza.”

“As time goes by, we are further and further from achieving the goals of the war: the eradication of Hamas and the release of the [captives], and we are sinking more and more into the mud of Gaza,” Barik said in an article run by the Ma’ariv newspaper.

Elsewhere, Abu Shahin rejected Israeli allegations that the resistance uses hospitals as operation headquarters.

He said the regime levels such allegations to justify its bombardments of health centers and mosques in the besieged territory.

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“The fact that the regime forces invaded the hospitals to find no resistance fighters reveals that the Palestinian resistance movements do not use civilian infrastructure for military operations,” he added.  

Despite that, according to the latest situation update by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of Monday, the Israeli military operation in the Nasser Hospital complex in Khan Younis continues.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, said earlier that a WHO team was not permitted to enter the hospital to assess the conditions of the patients and critical medical needs, despite reaching the hospital compound to deliver fuel.

Gaza Health Ministry reported that the Israeli forces have arrested 70 medical personnel, including an intensive care doctor and the Director of Surgery at Nasser Hospital.

It added that eight patients died due to the depletion of oxygen.

OCHA also reported that the situation in Al Amal Hospital in Khan Younis continues to be critical, following a 28-day siege by the Israeli military.

On Sunday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported that the third floor of the hospital sustained damage by artillery shelling and the destruction of the central maintenance room.

Intense Israeli bombardment from air, land, and sea continues to be reported across much of the Gaza Strip. The relentless bombardment is resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement, and destruction of civilian infrastructure.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, so far at least 29,092 Palestinians were killed in Gaza and 69,028 Palestinians were injured.

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