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On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a large-scale surprise attack on Israel in the early morning of a major Jewish holiday. As part of the attack, the Gaza-based terrorist group fired thousands of rockets into Israel and dispatched fighters into Israeli towns and communities near the Gaza Strip. On the same day, Abu Hamza, the spokesman for the Quds Companies, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), announced that the group was taking part in the ongoing aggression and attacks within Israel. During the fighting, PIJ released footage of its operatives storming army bases and Israeli towns and communities, provided a count of the Israeli casualties, and asserted that the Palestinian resistance factions had succeeded in “exposing the lie of the ‘invincible [Israeli] army.’”
The following are examples of the reports and statements released by PIJ on October 8, during the second day of fighting:
The Quds Companies published an approximately one-minute-long video showing its fighters storming several Israeli military bases and “settlements” in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip.
PIJ also reported that more than 350 “Zionists” had been killed and more than 1,800 injured in its storming of the Gaza envelope.
The Quds Companies’ military correspondent reported that the group’s elite fighters were still engaged in “violent clashes” at “enemy military positions and usurped settlements and on various axes in the Gaza envelope.”
A poster released by the Quds Companies depicted armed PIJ fighters, an Israeli soldier carrying a fallen comrade, and a burning tank. The same poster bears a quote from Akram Al-‘Ajouri, the head of the PIJ military department, taken from a recorded speech that was played at a military parade held by PIJ in the Gaza Strip on October 4. The quote reads, “Your feet will tread on the entire soil of Palestine and you will enter your [Al-Aqsa] Mosque as liberators and conquerors.”
PIJ media spokesman Muhammad Al-Hajj Mousa said: “The Al-Aqsa Flood battle, which the Palestinian resistance factions are waging so ably, has succeeded in exposing the lie of the ‘invincible [Israeli] army.’”
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