IDF says it struck 30 ‘significant’ Hamas targets amid fierce fighting in south Gaza

Intensive fighting took place in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis overnight Sunday and into Monday, with the Israeli Air Force carrying out some 30 strikes on Hamas targets in the area, as the Hamas-run health ministry said that 73 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in the last day.

The targets struck by fighter jets in the last day were “significant,” the IDF said on Monday morning, adding that their destruction will “help the forces that are maneuvering in the area to continue fighting.” According to the military, the targets included underground sites, weapons depots and other infrastructure belonging to the terror group.

In recent days, the infantry division of the 7th Armored Brigade successfully uncovered a tunnel shaft next to a school in Khan Younis, as well as other pieces of terror-related infrastructure in residential neighborhoods, the IDF revealed on Monday.

During an expanded maneuver inside the dense southern Gaza city, troops of the 7th Armored Brigade uncovered explosives, guns, grenades, radio devices and intelligence documents in offices and infrastructure located next to civilian homes, the military said.

After discovering a tunnel shaft next to a school in the same area, the army said troops uncovered toy Kalashnikov guns and photos documenting the weapons training that children at the school had been made to undergo.

During the operation, several RPG missiles were fired at the troops, who in response directed tank fire and an airstrike at the terror cell responsible, the IDF added.

Elsewhere in Khan Younis, ground troops engaged in battles with terrorists embedded in the city, directing drone strikes against targets as fighter jets operated overhead, the IDF said.

Troops from the Maglan commando unit spotted a group of more than 10 Hamas operatives at a rocket launching site inside Khan Younis and directed a drone strike against them, while the Paratroopers Brigade spotted a Hamas operative in a building and directed an airstrike against it. A short while later another operative was spotted in the building, and was killed by the troops, the military added.

In addition, troops of the 55th Reserve Paratroops Brigade identified a Hamas operative coming out of a building while “collecting intelligence on the force,” the IDF said, and confirmed that an attack helicopter struck the operative a short while later.

The IDF says it is expanding ground operations in south Khan Younis.

It says that over past two days, the 7th Armored Brigade maneuvered deeper into south Khan Younis, killing numerous Hamas operatives with tank shelling and airstrikes. pic.twitter.com/C1IUM4uhPq

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) January 8, 2024

Troops operating across the Gaza Strip uncovered vast amounts of weapons belonging to Hamas throughout the night.

In central Gaza, the IDF said reservists of the 179th Armored Brigade located a tunnel shaft, and found in it thousands of dollars and weapons, and in the Maghazi area of central Gaza, the IDF said Golani troops directed an airstrike on a Hamas weapons depot, where the terror group stored long-range rockets.

Meanwhile, troops of the Kfir Brigade located a car being used by Hamas operatives that contained weapons as well.

Amid the fighting in central and south Gaza, 73 people were reported by the Hamas-run health ministry to have been killed by Israeli forces and airstrikes in the past 24 hours, and an additional 99 were said to have been injured.

The number included eight people killed in an apparent strike near Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, the health ministry said, although the IDF did not immediately comment on the strike.

Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas — which erupted when thousands of terrorists stormed into Israel on the morning of October 7, slaughtering some 1,200 people and seizing around 240 hostages — 22,835 people have been killed in Gaza, the enclave’s health ministry has said.

The numbers cannot be independently verified, and include both civilian and combatant deaths and those killed by the hundreds of rockets fired by terror groups that fell in the Strip. Israel estimates that 8,500 terrorists have been killed since it launched its ground offensive into Gaza in late October.

While the IDF claims to have achieved near-total control over northern Gaza, it is a different story in the center and south, where Hamas’s leaders on the ground are believed to be hiding.

On Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had evacuated more than 600 patients from the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah following “troubling reports of increasing hostilities.”

Doctors Without Borders said a day earlier it had evacuated its staff from the same hospital after a bullet penetrated a wall in the intensive care unit.

The withdrawal of the aid groups from the hospital spread panic among people sheltering there and led many to leave for the southern part of the besieged territory. Omar al-Darawi, an employee at the hospital, said it has been struck multiple times in recent days and that patients have been concentrated on one floor so the remaining doctors can tend to them more easily.

In addition to evacuating the central Gaza hospital, WHO said on Monday that it had been forced to cancel a mission to bring medical supplies to northern Gaza after failing to receive security guarantees.

It was the fourth time WHO has had to call off a planned mission to bring urgently needed medical supplies to Al-Awda Hospital and the central drug store in northern Gaza since December 26, the organization said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

“It has now been 12 days since we were last able to reach northern Gaza,” the statement read. “Heavy bombardment, movement restrictions, and interrupted communications are making it nearly impossible to deliver medical supplies regularly and safely across Gaza, particularly in the north.”

Today, @WHO cancelled a planned mission to Al-Awda hospital and the central drug store in northern #Gaza for the fourth time since 26 Dec because we did not receive deconfliction and safety guarantees.

The mission planned to move urgently needed medical supplies to sustain the… pic.twitter.com/6v09rPbBb1

— WHO in occupied Palestinian territory (@WHOoPt) January 7, 2024

The delivery planned for Sunday, WHO said, had been designed to sustain the operations of five hospitals in the northern part of the enclave which was largely evacuated in the early stages of the war.

The United Nations has estimated that at least 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced by the war.

“I wake up thinking this is a passing nightmare, but it is a reality,” said displaced Gaza resident Nabil Fathi, 51. “Our home and my son’s home have been destroyed and we have 20 people martyred in our family. I don’t know where we will go even if I survive.”