Al-Qassam Brigades says it sniped Israeli officer, targeted armored personnel carrier in Gaza City

The Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, announced Saturday that its fighters sniped an Israeli officer and targeted an armored personnel carrier in Gaza City.

The group said in separate statements on Telegram that fighters “succeeded in sniping a Zionist officer with a Qassam ‘Ghoul' rifle in the southern Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City,” without providing details.

It shared a picture on Telegram that was captioned: “57 missions carried out by Al-Qassam snipers, including 34 with the ‘Ghoul' rifle.”

In 2014, Al-Qassam first released a video about a new locally manufactured sniper rifle in the Gaza Strip, which it named Ghoul.

It attributed the name of the rifle to Adnan Al-Ghoul, one of its manufacturing unit leaders, who was assassinated by Israel on Oct. 22, 2004, in Gaza City.

In a comment on the video posted on their website at that time, the group said that “the new sniper rifle, which we named ‘Ghoul,' is a 14.5 mm caliber rifle with a lethal range of up to 2 km (1.2 miles), and it is among the locally manufactured products of Al-Qassam.”

The Al-Qassam Brigades noted Saturday in separate statements that fighters “targeted an Israeli Merkava tank with a tandem shell and an Israeli armored personnel carrier with an explosive device in the southern Zaytoun neighborhood, inflicting casualties among their crew, including one killed and one injured.”

Earlier Saturday, the Israeli army announced the death of a new officer within its ranks.

"Officer Eyal Shominov, 24, from the Karmiel area, a company commander in the Shaked Battalion (424), Givati Brigade, was killed in the battle in northern Gaza Strip," it said.

The army did not disclose additional details on the fighting that led to Shominov's death.

According to data on the army's website, 577 officers and soldiers have been killed since the Gaza-based resistance group, Hamas, launched a surprise attack on Oct. 7.

Of the total, 238 have died in ground clashes that began in Gaza on Oct. 27.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since the surprise cross-border attack by Hamas. The ensuing Israeli war has killed more than 29,600 victims and caused mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Nearly 70,000 people have been injured.

Less than 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.​​​​​​​

Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.