Press Briefing by IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, February 6th , 2024

Good evening,

It has been one hundred and twenty-three days since the war began. Throughout, we have not forgotten the hostages for a moment. We are making every effort to bring them home and to extract all information about them and their condition. The IDF is accompanying the families of the hostages during these complex and difficult days, and our representatives provide the families with all the verified information about their loved ones. With this, we have notified thirty-one families that their loved ones who are hostages are no longer alive, and we have confirmed their deaths. To the rest of the families, we have provided all the verified information available to us about their fate and condition.

We continue to operate in order to create the conditions to bring all the hostages home. This is a moral, national, and international obligation. It is our compass, and it is how we will continue to act.

IDF soldiers continue to operate in Khan Yunis in the south of Gaza and are intensifying achievements in the north of Gaza.

In Khan Yunis, special units are operating in the sub-terranean area, together with the Israel Security Agency, using advanced technology and precise intelligence to locate Hamas' strategic compounds underground. Despite the dozens of kilometers of tunnels, there are not many compounds left, and we have reached most of them. We have located compounds where Hamas leaders hid and from where they managed the fighting, some of which held hostages, and others contained intelligence material. This evening, we are publishing some of the intelligence information found there by our forces – indicating a direct "connection" from Iran to Hamas and more so – to Yahya Sinwar. We found official Hamas documents from 2020 detailing the funds transferred by Iran between the years 2014 and 2020 to Hamas and to Sinwar. More than one hundred and fifty million dollars were transferred from Iran to Hamas. This is another example of how Iran exports terror across the Middle East. The terror that Iran exports and produces is a global problem. The intelligence information we find, we pass on to our partners around the world for verification. In the same sub-terranean space, we also found a safe with banknotes and bags containing more than twenty million shekels in cash, as you can see in the blue and black bags addressed to a clear location. These amounts join tens of millions of shekels we located during the war in Hamas tunnels in cases filled with millions of dollars. This is a recurring phenomenon – large sums of cash are kept in organized compounds underground for the personal use of senior Hamas officials. Hamas leaders invested the money in their own survival and that of their families underground.

Thanks to the intelligence we located underground, investigated, and studied in the Intelligence Directorate (J2) and the ISA, we are launching further and new operations and destroying new Hamas terror infrastructure. This is how we are currently acting in a military operation against terror sites in the north of Gaza. IDF soldiers are there at this moment, in the midst of a wide operation in the Shati area, in Gaza City, which we will update later. The forces are reaching additional sensitive Hamas infrastructure underground, eliminating terrorists remaining in the area and thwarting Hamas' attempts to rebuild its capabilities. Also, in these places, we are finding important intelligence this evening, which we will reveal later.

I want to address the exercise that took place in Judea and Samaria – the Central Command conducted exercises with the Judea and Samaria Division in a large number of scenarios. The division trains for one purpose only - to better protect the residents. Since the beginning of the war, the Central Command, under the personal leadership of the Commanding Officer of the Central Command, MG Yehuda Fox, has been working non-stop to protect the security of the residents, thwarting terror together with the ISA in close cooperation with the settlements. From the soldiers to the last of the commanders, we are here to protect the residents. In the exercise referenced, one scenario out of dozens did not need to be conducted. The IDF will investigate, learn, and above all, continue to perform its mission in the most professional and practical manner.