IDF reservist killed, another seriously wounded in Gaza City fighting

A reservist was killed and four soldiers were wounded in separate incidents fighting against the Hamas terror group in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday evening, the Israel Defense Forces announced Wednesday.

The fighting came as troops continued to advance in Gaza, in a new IDF offensive aimed at capturing 75 percent of the Strip’s territory.

The slain soldier was named as Master Sgt. (res.) Alon Farkas, 27, of the 646th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade’s 6646th Battalion, from Kabri.

According to an initial IDF probe, a Palestinian gunman armed with an assault rifle opened fire on the paratroopers who were operating in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood.

The gunman ambushed the troops from an alley and managed to flee following the attack, which seriously wounded another reservist, according to the military.

In a separate incident in the nearby town of Jabalia on Tuesday evening, Hamas used a drone to drop an explosive or a grenade on troops, according to the military.

The explosion moderately wounded two soldiers of the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit and lightly injured a Shin Bet officer.

A plume of smoke as vehicles move along a road used by displaced people fleeing from Khan Younis westwards to al-Mawasi in the southern Gaza Strip on June 3, 2025 (AFP)

A day earlier, three troops were killed in Jabalia when they were hit by a roadside bomb.

Farkas’s death on Tuesday brought Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip to 425. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.

Israel on March 18 resumed its attacks against Hamas with a wave of airstrikes, ending a two-month ceasefire. The IDF has since deployed five divisions to the Strip, amounting to tens of thousands of troops, and has been carrying out a wide-scale ground offensive aimed at defeating Hamas’s military wing and ending its civil rule in Gaza.