3 soldiers killed in north Gaza as troops raid hospital in pursuit of Hamas operatives

Three Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed Friday during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip’s Jabaliya as the military pushed ahead with an offensive in the neighborhood, including taking control of the area’s last functioning hospital in pursuit of Hamas operatives.

The IDF also continued with widespread strikes and raids across Gaza, with Hamas-run health authorities reporting more than 70 people killed in the past 24 hours.

The slain troops were named as Cpt. Barak Israel Sagan, 22, from Petah Tikva; Sgt. Ido Ben Zvi, 21, from Shomrat; and Sgt. Hillel Ovadia, 22, from Jerusalem.

All three served with the 460th Armored Brigade’s 196th Battalion. The brigade is the IDF’s school for tank commanders during peacetime. Sagan was a commander at the school, while Ben Zvi and Ovadia were cadets.

The three were killed in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya early on Friday morning when a powerful bomb was detonated against the tank they were in. The fourth soldier in the tank was moderately wounded.

Following the incident, Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stood at 361.

Also Friday, the IDF said it was operating at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip amid “intelligence information on terrorists and terror infrastructure in the area.”

In the weeks before the operation, the IDF said it enabled the evacuation of patients and staff from the hospital, while also ensuring that the medical center’s emergency systems continued to function.

So far, some 45,000 Palestinian civilians have evacuated from Jabaliya amid the IDF’s operation in the area, according to the military’s latest estimates. Hundreds of suspected terror operatives were detained, and hundreds of gunmen were also killed, the IDF added.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said hundreds of patients and staff were detained in the raid on the hospital.

“They are detaining hundreds of patients, medical staff and some displaced individuals from neighboring areas who sought refuge in the hospital from continuous bombardment,” the ministry said.

COGAT — the Israeli defense ministry body that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories — said Friday it had allowed the transfer of 23 patients out of the hospital the previous night by Palestinian ambulances and UN vehicles.

Kamal Adwan is the last functioning hospital in Gaza’s north. The facility said it has been struggling with shortages since the start of the war, which has been increasingly aggravated by the launch of an Israeli operation in northern Gaza earlier this month.

“There has been no supply or provision of food, medicine, or essential medical supplies needed to save the lives of the injured and sick in the hospital,” the ministry claimed, calling the situation inside “catastrophic in every sense of the word.”

COGAT said in its statement it had allowed the transfer of one fuel truck, “180 blood units and a truckload of medical equipment” donated by UN agencies.

Hamas called the storming of Kamal Adwan “a war crime and a flagrant violation of international laws.”

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said it had lost contact with the hospital.

“Since this morning’s reports of a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, we have lost touch with the personnel there,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X on Friday.

“This development is deeply disturbing, given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there.”

Tedros confirmed that the WHO and partner agencies had reached the hospital and managed to transfer 23 patients and 26 caregivers to Gaza’s main Al-Shifa Hospital.

“Kamal Adwan Hospital has been overflowing with close to 200 patients — a constant stream of horrific trauma cases. It is also full of hundreds of people seeking shelter,” said Tedros.

“Accessing hospitals across Gaza is getting unbelievably harder and exposes our staff to unnecessary danger.”

He called for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of hospitals, patients, health professionals and humanitarians.

In recent months, the IDF has carried out dozens of airstrikes on what it says are Hamas sites embedded within locations used as shelters for civilians, including hospitals, schools and UN facilities. It says it regularly takes steps to limit the harm by such strikes.

Also Friday, Palestinian officials said that 72 Palestinians had been killed in strikes and raids across Gaza since Thursday night.

The ministry said a strike on houses in the southern city of Khan Younis killed at least 38, claiming many of them were women and children.

Meanwhile, Israeli strikes on three houses in the nearby Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed 25 people and wounded dozens more, medics said.

Later on Friday, an Israeli airstrike killed nine people in Shati camp in Gaza City, medics said.

The figures could not be verified and did not differentiate between civilians and terror operatives.

The Israeli military said its forces had killed a number of Palestinian gunmen in air and ground strikes in the southern Gaza Strip and dismantled military infrastructure.

Meanwhile, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the “darkest moment” of the conflict in Gaza was unfolding in the north of the territory, warning Friday that Israel’s actions could amount to “atrocity crimes.”

“Unimaginably, the situation is getting worse by the day,” Turk said.

“My gravest fear is, given the intensity, breadth, scale and blatant nature of the Israeli operation currently underway in north Gaza, that number will rise dramatically.”

Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that Israel’s policies in northern Gaza “risk emptying the area of all Palestinians.”

“We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity,” he claimed, calling on the world’s leaders to act, stressing that all states are obligated under the Geneva Conventions to ensure respect for international humanitarian law.

His statement stressed the urgency of the situation, warning that “today the darkest moment of the Gaza conflict is unfolding in the north of the Strip, where the Israeli military is effectively subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and risk of starvation.”

“The bombing in north Gaza is non-stop,” he claimed.

At the same time, “the Israeli military has ordered hundreds of thousands to move, with no guarantees of return. But there is no safe way to leave,” he warned.

The UN rights chief cautioned that there was “extremely limited access to this part of Gaza, (and) next to no aid has reached the area in weeks, with unlawful restrictions remaining.”

Turk’s statement also pointed out that Palestinian terror groups also continue to operate among civilians, including in places of shelter, putting civilians in harm’s way “which is totally unacceptable.”

After nearly a year of war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terror onslaught, Israel kept up the pressure on Hamas, and launched a new operation in the northern Gaza Strip earlier this month, which it said was aimed at preventing terror operatives from regrouping in the war-torn territory. The Israeli military says the goal of its assault is to destroy the operational capabilities that Hamas is trying to rebuild in the north.

Amid the operation, the IDF has ordered the evacuation of Jabaliya and surrounding towns in northern Gaza, where several hundred thousand Palestinians are believed to still reside, despite repeated urgings by Israel to leave since the start of the war.

While tens of thousands have fled, many more have remained either because they are unwilling or unable to evacuate, and there have been reports that Hamas has been trying to prevent civilians from evacuating.

The war in Gaza began with the brutal massacre carried out by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities and to ensure that Gaza’s terror groups no longer posed a threat.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.