Ashkelon targeted by rocket fire from Gaza for first time in a month
No injuries in attack claimed by Islamic Jihad; visiting Strip, Halevi says IDF to battle Hamas ‘until we return the hostages’ and dismantle terror group’s ‘last company’
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
For the first time in a month, the southern coastal city of Ashkelon was targeted Friday by rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, in an attack claimed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The salvo included three rockets. According to the Israel Defense Forces, one projectile was shot down by the Iron Dome, while the other two struck open areas.
There were no reports of injuries or damages in the attack, which also set off sirens in nearby communities.
Meanwhile, the military announced Friday that IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi visited the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis the day before, telling officers that Israeli forces are working to apply pressure on Hamas to reach “good conditions” for a hostage deal.
“A hostage deal is something we are pressing to reach and bring under good conditions, which is a task of utmost importance. This is a defined war objective; we don’t need it defined for us either. This is a basic moral issue,” he said.
Halevi said the IDF will not stop battling Hamas “until we return the hostages” and “until we dismantle the last battalion, the last company” of the terror group.
He also praised Wednesday’s operation to recover the remains of five Israelis killed and taken hostage by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, which were found in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in Khan Younis.
“We were previously near these bodies, but didn’t know how to reach [them],” Halevi said.
The IDF said that in recent weeks it obtained intelligence, including from Shin Bet interrogations of detained terrorists in Gaza, on the location of the tunnel where Hamas was holding the bodies of Ravid Katz, 51, Oren Goldin, 33, Maya Goren, 56, Sgt. Kiril Brodski, 19, and Staff Sgt. Tomer Yaakov Ahimas, 20.
An image published Friday by the Shin Bet showed a detained Palestinian aiding members of the security agency to locate the tunnel. The Palestinian suspect is seen wearing a military uniform and protective gear, but he is handcuffed. He is unarmed and also seen wearing blue sneakers and not army boots like the other Shin Bet agents.
Elsewhere in Gaza, the IDF said that combat engineers demolished a kilometer-long Hamas attack tunnel in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya during a recent operation.
In the underground route, which began in a residential neighborhood, troops found weapons including anti-tank missiles, and infrastructure that would allow terror operatives to reside in the tunnel for long periods, the military said.
In a separate operation in the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, troops of the Kfir Brigade’s Netzah Yehuda battalion raided sites used by Hamas, and destroyed anti-tank launching posts, booby-trapped buildings, and other infrastructure used by the terror group, the IDF said.
Earlier Friday, the IDF said a reserve soldier was killed during fighting in the Strip’s southernmost city of Rafah, raising Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas and in other military operations along the Gaza border to 330. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.
War erupted on October 7 when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people. The estimated 3,000 terrorists who burst through the boundary also abducted 251 people who were taken as hostages to Gaza.
Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas, topple its Gaza regime, and free the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 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 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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