HACKERS have managed to break into the Israeli regime’s ministry of military affairs, offering to sell stolen data unless the regime releases hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
The group that refers to itself as ‘NetHunter’ announced the breach in a video message posted on its Telegram channel.
Following the announcement, security sources confirmed to Israel Hayom daily on Tuesday that there had been indeed a breach into the ministry’s computers.
The group said it had managed to access ‘classified documents’ belonging to the ministry, and documents of cooperation agreements between the regime and other states.
The breach also revealed data concerning ‘senior Israeli officers’ and the regime’s troops, it added.
NetHunter said it had carried out the cyber attack as ‘an answer to part of Zionist crimes.’ ‘We uncover these crimes and introduce some of Israel’s allies and accomplices to the world,’ it noted.
The group has now threatened to sell the information to ‘pro-Palestinian states’ if the regime refused to release as many as ‘500 Palestinian prisoners’.
According to the Israeli paper, the data included ‘communications and orders’, which the hackers have offered for sale for 50 bitcoins (about $3.45 million).
Last November, a group of pro-Palestinian hackers, calling itself ‘Cyber Toufan’, had similarly attacked the ministry, and subsequently dumped huge troves of stolen data on the group’s own Telegram account.
They said at the time that the data included the names of the Israeli army’s active-duty and reserve troops.
Meanwhile, the number of Palestinians arrested by Israeli military forces in the occupied West Bank has surged to 8,165 since October 7, when Israel launched its relentless offensive against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society and the Commission of Detainees and ex-Detainees in a joint statement on Tuesday said that over the past 24 hours, Israeli forces had arrested 20 Palestinians across the West bank.
The statement said that most of the arrests took place in Tulkarm, with additional arrests scattered across other cities, towns and refugee camps in the West Bank such as Beit Lahm, al-Khalil, Ramallah, Nablus, Tubas, and al-Quds.
The arrests were made amidst reports of widespread abuse, severe beatings, threats against detainees and their families, and extensive vandalism in citizens’ homes and prisoners’ residences in the Israeli prisons.
In the aftermath of the al-Aqsa Storm, over 8,165 arrests were made in the West Bank, with individuals being detained from their homes, at military checkpoints, coerced into surrendering, and even taken hostage, the statement revealed.
These figures do not include the thousands of adults and children the Israeli army has detained, tortured and interrogated in makeshift prisons across Gaza, outside any legal or civilian oversight.
Conditions for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have allegedly worsened considerably, with detainees experiencing extreme overcrowding and limited access to essential rights, including food, water, electricity, medical care, family visits, and legal assistance.
Palestinian prisoner groups have repeatedly reported that Palestinians in Israeli prisons are being denied medical care, which pushes those jailed to the brink of death.
At least 10 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons since Israel’s war on Gaza began, according to Palestinian news agency WAFA. But an investigation by Israeli daily Haaretz revealed that the number was actually at least 27. Rights groups put the number even higher.
Israel has intensified its attacks against Palestinians throughout the West Bank since October 7, when it launched a devastating war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Since then, the Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 459 Palestinians from the West Bank, with over 4,750 others sustaining injuries.
In the span of the past six months, at least 33,482 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza. The relentless violence has also resulted in the mass displacement of the 2.3 million people inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
Concerns have been raised regarding the fate of those who have gone missing, as they may be trapped beneath the rubble or confined within makeshift Israeli prisons.
The significant number of Palestinian detainees remaining in Israeli prisons is a crucial role in truce negotiations between Palestinian resistance group Hamas and Israel.
About 130 of the 250 Israeli captives taken during Operation Al-Aqsa Storm are still in Gaza after a provisional truce deal in December saw the exchange of a number of prisoners between the two sides.
- Amidst the rising atrocities of the Israeli state against palestinians, the country of Nicaragua has shut down its embassy in Germany after taking the West European country to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for facilitating Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Nicaragua announced the closure of its diplomatic mission in Berlin on Wednesday, noting that the Central American state’s consular tasks and official businesses in Germany will now be handled by the embassy in Austria.
Managua recently announced the accreditation of its ambassador in Vienna, Sabra Amari Murillo Centeno, as a concurrent representative in Germany.
Earlier this week, hearings opened in the ICJ, with Nicaragua saying Germany is violating the 1948 Genocide Convention by providing Israel with military and financial aid, as well as suspending funding to the main UN humanitarian agency in Gaza, UNRWA.
Asking The Hague-based court to issue emergency orders, Nicaragua said Germany’s arms sales to the Tel Aviv regime make it complicit in the Gaza war crimes.
‘There can be no question that Germany … was well aware, and is well aware, of at least the serious risk of genocide being committed,’ Nicaraguan Ambassador to the Netherlands, Carlos Jose Francisco Arguello Gomez, said in his opening statement to the ICJ.
‘Germany is failing to honour its own obligation to prevent genocide or to ensure respect of international humanitarian law.’
In a separate case brought by South Africa in January, the ICJ ruled that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Germany — Israel’s second-largest arms provider, after the United States — sold weapons worth 326.5 million euros ($354m), a tenfold increase compared to 2022.
