Gaza rockets target Israel as airstrikes on Strip said to kill 20

Missile intercepted, another hits open area, no damage; Hamas officials say 15 killed in strike on Jabalia house; 127 Gazans brought out of Gaza via Israel for medical care in UAE

Rockets are found by IDF troops in southern Gaza's Rafah, in a handout photo issued on January 1, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)
Rockets are found by IDF troops in southern Gaza's Rafah, in a handout photo issued on January 1, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

Gaza terror groups continued to fire rockets at Israel with a pair of missiles launched at southern border areas at the start of the new year. One of them was intercepted while the other hit an open area, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Military operations saw several reported IDF strikes, with Hamas claiming at least 20 killed.

After nearly 15 months of fighting since Palestinian terror group Hamas led a devastating massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, there appeared to be no let up in the ensuing war at the start of the new year.

At midnight, two rockets were launched from the central Gaza Strip at the southern Israeli city of Netivot, the IDF said.

There were no reports of injuries in the attack, which was claimed by Hamas.

Later, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichai Adraee, tweeted a warning for residents of central Gaza’s al-Bureij to evacuate ahead of expected airstrikes, after the midnight rockets were fired from the area, as 2025 began.

“Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets from this area,” says Adraee. “For your own safety, move immediately to the humanitarian zone.”

In an update from on the ground, the IDF said troops operating in southern Gaza’s Rafah located and destroyed a rocket manufacturing facility.

The find was made by reservists of the Kiryati Brigade, which has been operating in Rafah under the Gaza Division for the past month.

At the site, the military said the troops found medium-to-long-range rockets, along with other weapons.

A rocket manufacturing site in southern Gaza’s Rafah is demolished, in a video issued by the military on January 1, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

Israel also reported that 127 Gazans, most of them children and their caregivers, departed Gaza for medical treatment in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.

COGAT, the Israeli department in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, said the Palestinians left the enclave after security checks at the Kerem Shalom Crossing, where they entered Israeli territory. They were then taken to the Ilan and Asaf Ramon International Airport from where they flew to receive medical treatment in the UAE.

The project was carried out in international cooperation with the UAE and the World Health Organization participating, COGAT said in a statement, adding “It is an additional medical–humanitarian step made possible in the context of Israel’s humanitarian policy in the Gaza Strip.”

“We stress that this humanitarian action is another of the efforts led by the State of Israel together with the UAE as the nations deepen their ties under the Abraham Accords and in excellent cooperation with Romania and the European Union,” the statement said.

COGAT said that in recent months, Israel has “eased conditions of exit for medical treatment in third countries.” As a result, the unspecified period has seen 23 groups numbering 1,055 patients and caregivers pass through Kerem Shalom to 13 different countries abroad.

Israel, it said, “is thankful for the UAE’s leadership of this important humanitarian project, as it is for all the humanitarian efforts advanced in the Gaza Strip by international aid organizations and third countries in coordination with Israel since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip.”

A Palestinian girl carries a portion of food as she makes her way amid the debris at the site of an Israeli strike the previous night, in Jabalia, in the central Gaza Strip on January 1, 2025. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Meanwhile, in Gaza, local authorities reported that 15 people were killed in a strike on a house in the town of Jabalia.

Gazan officials do not differentiate between civilians and fighters when providing causality figures.

“Fifteen people were martyred and more than 20 were injured” in the strike on a house where displaced people were living, according to Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the Hamas-run civil defense agency.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reported strike.

Since October 6, the military has been conducting a major land and air offensive in northern Gaza, particularly targeting Jabalia and its adjacent refugee camp.

The military says it is an effort to prevent Hamas terrorists from regrouping there and that it has killed hundreds of fighters.

An Israeli soldier adjusts his night vision goggles as his unit prepares to enter the Gaza Strip at the Israel-Gaza border in southern Israel on December 31, 2024. (Tsafrir Abayov/AP)

A relative said rescuers were still searching for survivors.

“The house has turned into a pile of debris,” said Jibri Abu Warda, adding that the strike occurred at around 1:00 am (2300 GMT Tuesday).

He said the explosions shook the area, and rescuers reached the targeted house only in the morning.

“It was a massacre, with body parts of children and women scattered everywhere. They were sleeping when the house was bombed,” Abu Warda said.

“No one knows why they targeted the house. They were all civilians.”

A separate Israeli strike on Wednesday targeted a group of people in the Al-Manara neighborhood of Khan Younis, in Gaza’s south, killing at least four people, civil defense said.

Another strike overnight in the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed a woman and a child, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 45,000 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 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

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.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 395. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.

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