Hamas Used Only A Fraction of Its Capabilities in Recent War: Sinwar
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas is capable of launching hundreds of missiles with the range of up to 200 km towards the Israeli-occupied territories in one minute, the leader of the movement said.
“The resistance has the ability to fire hundreds of missiles with a range of 100-200 kilometers per minute at the Zionist enemy,” Yahya Sinwar said at a press briefing on Wednesday, adding that what the resistance demonstrated in defending Gaza was only a fraction of its capabilities.
The latest escalation was triggered by the Israeli forces who tried to force Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds, followed by a violent onslaught on worshipers at the sacred al-Aqsa Mosque during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
The Israeli regime then embarked on a brutal military offensive against civilian areas in the besieged Gaza Strip earlier this month, targeting high-rise buildings housing residential apartments and media offices.
The resistance movements in Gaza responded by launching more than 4,000 rockets and missiles towards the Israeli-occupied territories.
Sinwar noted that, toward the end of the war, Hamas aborted a plan for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the movement’s military wing, to effectively put an end to the Israeli aggression by launching “300 missiles in one go” at the occupied territories.
The Israeli regime failed to implement any of its schemes or hit resistance positions, including Hamas’ missile arsenals, he said, rejecting Israeli claims that Hamas-built tunnels were damaged in Israeli bombardments.
The tunnels are used to transfer humanitarian goods into blockaded Gaza.
“We have more than 500 km of tunnels in the Gaza Strip, and the damage is no more than five percent,” he said.
The regime has waged four wholesale wars against Gaza, three in the 2000s that each killed thousands of Gazans, and the latest 12-day one that killed more than 250 Palestinians, including 66 children and 39 women.
Sinwar stressed that the Palestinian nation will not cease resistance until victory.
“The shape of the entire Middle East will change, and the Zionist enemy will see the masses of our people rise to victory in al-Aqsa and al-Quds,” he said.
The Hamas leader also noted that the resistance has 10,000 people ready to die in defense of the al-Aqsa Mosque.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Sinwar rejected the so-called two-state solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stressing, “The so-called coexistence inside the Palestinian land has fallen forever.”
He also thanked the Islamic Republic of Iran for its all-out support for the resistance front.