Five soldiers killed, 10 wounded in explosion in northern Gaza, IDF says

Initial probe finds troops were prepping for engineering activity when explosives detonated, collapsing building; Hamas-run agency claims at least 50 dead in strikes in Gaza City

Soldiers killed in the northern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2025: (L-R) Staff Sgt. Yahav Hadar, Staff Sgt. Yoav Feffer, Staff Sgt. Guy Karmiel, Staff Sgt. Aviel Wiseman, and Cpt. Yair Yakov Shushan. (Courtesy)
Soldiers killed in the northern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2025: (L-R) Staff Sgt. Yahav Hadar, Staff Sgt. Yoav Feffer, Staff Sgt. Guy Karmiel, Staff Sgt. Aviel Wiseman, and Cpt. Yair Yakov Shushan. (Courtesy)

Five Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed and 10 were wounded in an explosion in northern Gaza on Monday, the military said, raising Israel’s toll in over 15 months of fighting in the Strip to 407.

The announcement and reports in Gaza of scores killed in Israeli airstrikes underlined the fierce fighting still taking place in the enclave, even as negotiators in Qatar were said to be nearing a deal that could end the war and free hostages held there since October 7, 2023.

The slain troops were all serving with the Nahal Brigade’s Reconnaissance Unit.

They were named as Cpt. Yair Yakov Shushan, 23, from Ma’alot-Tarshiha; Staff Sgt. Yahav Hadar, 20, from Kfar Tavor; Staff Sgt. Guy Karmiel, 20, from Gedera; Staff Sgt. Yoav Feffer, 19, from Herzliya; and Staff Sgt. Aviel Wiseman, 20, from Poria.

On Monday evening, the IDF said it had presented the families of the five soldiers with an initial probe of the deadly incident, which found that the team of troops from the Nahal Brigade’s Reconnaissance Unit had set out on Monday morning for a mission in the Beit Hanoun area.

They were inside a building and preparing to use explosives for engineering activity when the explosives detonated. As a result of the blast, the building the troops were in collapsed, killing the five soldiers.

Troops operating in Gaza’s Beit Hanoun in an undated photo released by the military for publication on January 12, 2025 (Israel Defense Forces)

The military said the cause of the explosion was still under investigation.

Much of the heaviest fighting over the past several months has been in northern Gaza, where the IDF launched a fresh offensive in October to keep Hamas terrorists from regrouping.

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Hamas-controlled civil defense agency, said Israeli strikes pounded Gaza City throughout the day, hitting “schools, homes and even gatherings of people,” killing at least 50.

The number could not be confirmed, and Hamas officials do not differentiate between civilians and combatants in their death tallies.

The civil defense agency claimed eleven people were killed and several others injured when an Israeli strike targeted a house in the city’s Shejaiya neighborhood, with the rest occurring in other strikes across Gaza City throughout the day.

There was no comment from the Israeli army.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

Israelis and Gazans were hopeful Monday that the war could soon draw down, amid indications that mediators in Doha were nearing a deal to free 98 Israeli hostages held by Hamas and end the fighting in the Strip.

Among the key sticking points in the talks have been disagreements over a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the scale of humanitarian aid for the Palestinian territory, the return of displaced Gazans to their homes, and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Palestinian enclave and the reopening of border crossings.

This picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows smoke plumes rising from explosions above destroyed buildings in the northern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2025. (Menahem Kahana/AFP)

The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

Vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, Israel launched a wide-scale military campaign in Gaza, which the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says has left more than 46,000 people in the Strip dead or are presumed dead. This toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Agencies contributed to this report.

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