IDF strikes Hamas target in Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, rejects Palestinian casualty claims

An Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya on Saturday night hit a Hamas target using precision munitions, the military said, rejecting Palestinian reports that as many as 73 people were killed.

In a statement on the overnight strike, the military said: “The numbers published by the Gaza information office — which acts as a communications arm of Hamas — are exaggerated.”

Those numbers “do not line up with the information available to the IDF, the precision munitions used, and the precise damage done to a terror target, of the Hamas terror organization,” it said.

The IDF called on the media to “be careful with the information published by Hamas officials,” noting that “this is an active combat zone.”

“The IDF operates in a precise and targeted manner and does everything it can to avoid attacking uninvolved civilians,” the statement concluded.

The statement — which did not provide further information about the strike — was referring to claims by the enclave’s civil defense agency spokesman that “civil defense crews recovered 73 martyrs and a large number of wounded as a result of the Israeli air force targeting a residential area.”

An Israeli airstrike that hit several houses and a multi-storey residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya has killed at least 73 people, according to medics and Hamas-run media outlets.https://t.co/513JGP0Aud pic.twitter.com/GQv6cyJlRn

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 20, 2024

The IDF, meanwhile, said it continued to operate in northern, central and southern parts of Gaza.

“The troops eliminated dozens of terrorists during close-quarter encounters on the ground and aerial strikes” across Gaza, it said.

WAFA, the Palestinian Authority news agency, said Israeli strikes Sunday killed seven people — including a child — in Beit Lahiya, two people near Gaza City and four people near Rafah, in the Strip’s south. The army did not specifically comment on those reports.

Israel has been at war with the Hamas terror group in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 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 said it had killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August, in addition to 1,000 terrorists killed 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 357.