3 more troops killed as IDF hits Hamas in central Gaza, battles al-Bureij battalion

The IDF announced Tuesday that three more soldiers had been killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip, bringing the toll of slain troops since the start of the ground offensive to 161 as battles intensified in the central Strip between troops and Hamas’s al-Bureij battalion.

The deceased soldiers were named as:

• Master Sgt. (res.) Maor Lavi, 33, of the Bislamach Brigade’s 450th Battalion, from Susya.
• Cpt. Shay Shamriz, 26, a company commander in the Nahal Brigade’s 931st Battalion, from Merkaz Shapira.
• Cpt. (res.) Shaul Greenglick, 26, of the Nahal Brigade’s 931st Battalion, from Ra’anana.

Lavi was killed in central Gaza in a battle that also seriously wounded another soldier of the 450th Battalion.

Shamriz and Greenglick were killed in the northern part of the Strip. Another officer and two soldiers of the 931st Battalion were seriously wounded in the same battle.

Separately, a soldier of the Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance unit was seriously hurt in northern Gaza.

Earlier Tuesday, the military announced the deaths of Staff Sgt. (res.) Elisha Yehonatan Lober and Sgt. First Class (res.) Joseph Yosef Gitarts.

The deaths came as the IDF was further expanding its operations in the central Gaza Strip.

“The IDF forces are fighting in the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis, and we have expanded the fighting to the area called the ‘Central Camps,'” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday evening.

“We are operating in Khan Younis with new methods and with a different composition of forces, and the same is true of the central camps,” he added, referring to the area made up of several refugee camps in central Gaza.

“We will continue to adapt the operation, the method and the composition of the forces according to the operational needs,” Hagari said.

Khan Younis is the largest city in southern Gaza, where many leaders of the Hamas terror group are thought to have fled. On Monday, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, assumed to be in Khan Younis, appeared defiant in his first message since the October 7 massacre, grossly inflating the terror group’s achievements in the war.

The IDF said Tuesday that the 36th Division was moving away from the Gaza City area and striking Hamas’s al-Bureij battalion, which consists of around 1,000 fighters and is just one of four Hamas battalions in the terror group’s central camps brigade.

“The battalions of the central camps are currently facing the might of the IDF. They will cease to function as other battalions have ceased to function,” said the commander of the 36th Division, Brig. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa.

The four Hamas battalions in the central camps brigade — al-Bureij, Deir al-Balah, Maghazi and Nuseirat — have all sustained some damage in Israeli strikes, but are believed to be largely functioning. The commander of the central camps brigade, Ayman Nofel, was killed in an Israeli strike last month.

During the first hours of ground operations in al-Bureij, the IDF said troops of the Bislamach Brigade located a tunnel shaft leading to a large underground Hamas tunnel network, as well as a training ground.

The IDF is currently focusing most of its efforts on the southern part of the Strip, while conducting clear-up operations of Hamas infrastructure in the north.

The 36th Division had fought in the Gaza City neighborhoods of Zeitoun, Shejaiya, Rimal and Shati.

“The fighting in Shejaiya was difficult and complex, and we managed to achieve significant achievements during it. Shejaiya will no longer be a terror center for Hamas,” Bar Kalifa said.

The IDF has begun to demolish buildings in areas it has captured along the Gaza border, including Shejaiya, to establish a one-kilometer buffer zone, so that residents of Israeli border towns can return to live in their communities in safety.

However, sporadic rocket fire continued Tuesday toward towns in the south, with projectiles fired at Ashkelon, Sderot and a number of Gaza border communities.

There were no injuries, but a rocket struck a synagogue in a town in the Sdot Negev Regional Council.

Video from the synagogue showed a significant hole in the roof and extensive damage inside.

רקטה פגעה בבית כנסת בשדות נגב, אין נפגעים@SteinmanTamir pic.twitter.com/7Hoy3Xwfo8

— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) December 26, 2023

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders vowing to continue fighting, despite growing international pressure to wind down the battle and calls at home for a deal to free hostages held in Gaza, the military appeared poised Tuesday for a newly intensified push into the central and southern parts of the Strip.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said that the military is expanding its operations in southern and central Gaza as it is close to dismantling all of Hamas’s battalions in the northern part of the Strip, but warned that the war will last “many more months.”

Halevi said that the military was concentrating its efforts in the south of the Strip while continuing to “preserve and deepen the achievement” in northern Gaza.

He added that the IDF “will not allow a return to the security reality before October 7, and we will not allow such an event to be repeated.”

Halevi warned that the war would not end in the near future.

“This war has necessary and not easy goals to achieve, it takes place in complex territory. That’s why the war will continue for many more months, and we will work with different methods, so that the achievement will be maintained for a long time,” he said, adding that the IDF is constantly learning and adapting its fighting methods to each area of the Gaza Strip it operates in.

“There are no magic solutions, no shortcuts in the thorough dismantling of a terror organization, but stubborn and determined fighting. And we are very, very determined,” Halevi said.

Halevi’s comments came hours after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed Israel would punish Hamas over its brutal October 7 attack, “whether it takes months or years.”

However, Netanyahu is facing pressure from Washington to quickly transition toward a less intense form of fighting, with US President Joe Biden’s administration joining international calls for the humanitarian crisis in the Strip to ease, even as Washington has continued to back Israel’s refusal to entertain a ceasefire with Hamas still in charge of Gaza.

Israel launched its war against Hamas after the terror group led an unprecedented assault into southern Israel on October 7. Some 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, were massacred. Another approximately 240 people were kidnapped. A previous truce deal allowed for the release of over 100 hostages, but talks for a new deal have foundered.

The expanding fighting has pushed the Gazan population into a shrinking area, particularly the city of Deir al-Balah in the center and Rafah in the far south of Gaza, on the Egyptian border. More than a million people have squeezed into UN shelters, and many more displaced people are crowded into houses.

Gaza’s civilians are suffering dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine, with only limited aid entering the Strip.

The Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel said Tuesday that internet and telephone services were cut again across Gaza.

“We regret to announce a complete breakdown of fixed telecommunications and internet services in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing offensive,” the company said, announcing the fourth such breakdown since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health authorities claim Israel’s bombing campaign and fighting on the ground have killed over 20,915 people in Gaza, though the figures cannot be verified. Hamas has been accused of inflating casualty figures in the past, and including those killed by misfired Palestinian rockets.

Hamas does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The IDF says it has killed some 8,000 Hamas operatives in Gaza and another 1,000 terrorists during and immediately after the October 7 attacks.

Times of Israel staff and agencies contributed to this report.