3 reservists killed in central Gaza fighting, bringing IDF’s weekend toll to 4
Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Danil Pechenyuk and Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Nitai Metodi killed in Gaza City bomb attack, while Sgt. Maj. (res.) Yaniv Itzhak Oren slain in clash with gunmen
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
Three reserve soldiers were killed during fighting against the Hamas terror group in the central Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Saturday, bringing the toll of slain troops over the weekend to four.
Two of the soldiers whose deaths were announced on Saturday night were killed in an explosion in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, which claimed the life of another reservist whose death was announced on Friday. The third soldier was killed in a separate clash with Palestinian gunmen in a nearby area.
The troops slain in the blast in Gaza City were named as Sgt. First Class (res.) Danil Pechenyuk, 27, from Bat Yam, and Sgt. First Class (res.) Nitai Metodi, 23, from Ashkelon. They both served in the Jerusalem Brigade’s 6310th Battalion.
The soldier killed during the separate clash was named as Sgt. Maj. (res.) Yaniv Itzhak Oren, 35, of the Jerusalem Brigade’s 8119th Battalion, from Ein Gedi.
In the incident on Friday morning, several soldiers were hit by an explosive device planted on the outside of a building they were searching, in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. In all, three soldiers were killed, four were seriously wounded, and another three were moderately hurt in the incident.
On Friday, the IDF announced the death of Sgt. First Class (res.) Evyatar Atuar, who was killed in the attack. The families of the other two soldiers were notified over the weekend.
Oren was killed several hours later during a clash with terror operatives in the Netzarim Corridor area, just south of Zeitoun.
According to the military, a cell of four Hamas gunmen attacked an IDF encampment in the Netzarim Corridor. The troops were able to fight back, killing three of them, while a fourth fled. A short while later, the fourth gunman was killed in an airstrike, the IDF said.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip now stands at 338.
The IDF said reservists with the 252nd Division — including the Jerusalem Brigade — had been carrying out a “pinpoint” operation in Gaza City, during which several gunmen were killed.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, the IDF issued a new evacuation warning for Palestinians in the east Deir al-Balah and Maghazi area of central Gaza.
Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, published a map of the zones that need to be evacuated.
#عاجل ‼️ الى كل المتواجدين في منطقة بلديات المصدر والمغازي والحارات البساتين، الانصار، الديمثاء، الصفا، السدره, شرق دير البلح والمفرق الشرقي لدير البلح والمتواجدين بجانب شارع صلاح الدين في هذه المنطقه وتحديدًا في بلوكات 125, 126, 2231, 2232:
⭕️من أجل أمنكم، اخلوا المناطق فوراً… pic.twitter.com/NKA5aRmFor
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) August 24, 2024
Palestinians in the area were called to move to the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone, which is currently around 42 square kilometers (16 square miles), or 11 percent of the total size of the Gaza Strip.
According to IDF estimates, some 1.9 million Palestinians of the 2.3 million Gazan population are residing in the zone.
The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, western neighborhoods of Khan Younis, and central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
An overnight strike on a house west of Khan Younis killed 11 people, including a woman and four children, a doctor at Nasser Hospital said. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza on Saturday reported 69 deaths in the previous 48 hours.
First responders also recovered 16 bodies from the Hamad Town residential complex in Khan Younis after a partial pullout of Israeli forces, 10 bodies from a residential block west of Khan Younis, and two farther south in Rafah.
The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear, but the areas were repeatedly bombed by the Israeli military over the past week. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies.
Some residents returned to Hamad Town, crunching on rubble as they walked between destroyed apartment buildings. One multi-story building’s entire wall was gone, its rooms framing residents picking through debris.
The IDF’s 98th Division had been operating in the Hamad Town area, as well as on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah in recent weeks.
On Saturday, the IDF said a Palestinian Islamic Jihad tunnel located on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah was demolished by combat engineers.
The tunnel was some 500 meters long, according to the military.
It had been located by the 7th Armored Brigade’s 82nd Battalion and later demolished by the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit.
The IDF said the 7th Brigade has killed dozens of gunmen and demolished dozens of sites belonging to terror groups in the east Deir al-Balah area amid an ongoing operation.
Soldiers of the brigade’s 77th Battalion also located a primed rocket launcher in the area, the IDF added.
Meanwhile, the military said troops of the 162nd Division killed dozens of gunmen over the past day in close-quarters combat and by directing airstrikes in the neighborhood of Tel Sultan, in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
Separately, the IDF said Saturday that fighter jets carried out an airstrike in Gaza overnight that killed a prominent Hamas operative involved in the production of weapons.
Israel launched its war against Hamas in Gaza following the terror group’s onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, during which it killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, 105 of whom are believed to still be held in the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Agencies contributed to this report.
