IDF says officer and soldier seriously wounded as fighting rages in Khan Younis
Locals report Israeli tanks advancing in areas surrounding the southern Gaza city; fresh evacuation orders issued in enclave’s central region after rockets launched from Bureij
Palestinians in southern Gaza reported on Sunday that Israeli troops were advancing in the areas surrounding Khan Younis, thanks to fierce battles with Hamas that the Israel Defense Forces said had left one officer and a soldier with the 7th Armored Brigade’s 82nd Battalion seriously wounded. The soldiers were taken to hospitals for treatment, the IDF said.
Israeli tanks pushed further into the three towns of al-Qarara, al-Zanna, and Bani Suheila, in the east of Khan Younis, local Palestinians said, reporting that fierce fighting could be heard in areas where the IDF was battling Hamas terrorists.
Palestinian medics said that at least nine people had been killed earlier on Sunday by Israeli military strikes in the area, although the figures could not be verified, and officials of the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry do not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
The latest IDF offensive in Khan Younis was launched last Monday after the IDF said it had identified Hamas terrorists regrouping there, three months after the military withdrew from the southern Gaza city. On Wednesday, it also announced that one of the goals of the operation had been to retrieve the bodies of five Israelis killed and dragged into Gaza during the October 7 massacre in southern Israel.
The renewed fighting had forced thousands more families in southern Gaza to leave their homes and head west, to the designated humanitarian areas in al-Mawasi to the west and Deir al-Balah to the north.
Inside the Israel-designated “humanitarian zone,” in the al-Mawasi area, an airstrike on a tent was reported to have killed five people, including a 4-month-old girl named Maria Abu Ziada. The IDF said it was aware of the reported strike and that it was looking into it.
Meanwhile, in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, Israeli forces were reported to have advanced deeper into northern parts of the city, where they had yet to take full control.
In central Gaza, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee issued fresh evacuation orders, calling for Palestinian civilians in the area to head for the designated humanitarian zones.
The military would “forcefully operate” against terror groups in the Bureij area, Adraee said, urging residents to leave “immediately for their safety” after rockets were launched from the central Gaza camp.
Also in the center of the war-torn enclave, Israeli troops were reported to be battling Hamas in the Tel al-Hawa suburb of Gaza City.
The Hamas-run health ministry said on Sunday that some 39,300 people had been killed since the start of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, and another 90,830 had been injured. Of that number, it said, 66 had been killed in the past 24 hours.
The Gaza authority does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
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.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border stands at 331. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.
The Times of Israel Community.