Hamas Accuses Israel of Terrorism for Stripping Fighters Naked, Snapping Photos

Hamas issued a statement early Friday condemning the stripping of their alleged fighters captured by Israel Defense Force soldiers inside Gaza, in photos that have been widely circulated online.

Hamas, which launched an attack on Israel that included the mass murder, rape and torture of civilians, calls the move by Israeli forces a revenge tactic — one employed by "mercenaries" and "terrorists" with "no values."

"Stripping them of their clothes in a humiliating manner, is a blatant Zionist crime to take revenge on our defenseless civilians, as a result of the blows suffered by its soldiers and officers at the hands of Palestinian resistance men," said Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq in a statement.

Al-Rishq claimed that the dozens of men seen in the footage, stripped to their underwear and sitting in the street, were not Hamas combatants but innocent citizens.

"We hold the occupation responsible for their lives and safety, and we call on all human rights and humanitarian institutions and organizations to intervene," the statement concludes.

The protocol employed by Israel to strip and bind the hands of detainees is not out of the ordinary during wartime, according to John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute.

"When prisoners surrender (some unofficial reports Hamas surrendered out of tunnels) or are captured, they are immediately searched," Spencer wrote in a thread on X.

"Many militaries have internal processes, in the U.S. military it is to search, silence, segregate, speed (to the rear for processing), & safeguard."

He added: "In Israel and Gaza, combatants often have weapons and explosives (suicide vests and other) so a tactic of the IDF is to have the prisoners remove their clothing down to their underwear from a distance to ensure they are not a threat to their captors or other prisoners."

Videos and photos published by Israeli outlets N12 and Mako show the captives — most barefoot, shirtless, and stripped to their underpants — lined along a road in Gaza under the watchful eye of Israeli soldiers.

One image shows a number of the captives packed into the back of a truck, a mounted heavy gun visible in the foreground.

Further details about the mass capture were not immediately known, but similar past operations have yielded valuable intelligence about terrorist operations in Gaza, according to Mako.