IDF troops kill over 50 Hamas gunmen during ongoing raid in Gaza’s Shifa Hospital
Reservist Sebastian Haion, 51, killed in hospital op; Palestinians report 14 dead in overnight strikes in Rafah; Blinken: All Gazans at ‘severe levels of acute food insecurity’
IDF troops have killed more than 50 Hamas gunmen during their ongoing raid at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the military said Tuesday.
The military announced Tuesday that an IDF reservist had been killed in the fighting, bringing the Israeli toll in the Shifa operation to two.
The IDF said that some 180 suspects had been captured in the raid. On Monday, the military said 200 suspects had been detained, indicating some had since been released.
The raid began early Monday morning and was being carried out by the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit, the 401st Armored Brigade, and the Shin Bet security agency.
The soldier killed in the operation was named as Warrant Officer (res.) Sebastian Haion, 51, a commander in the 401st Armored Brigade chief’s forward command team, from Rosh Ha’ayin.
His death brought the toll of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas to 251.
The IDF had earlier announced that Staff Sgt. Matan Vinogradov, 20, of the Nahal Brigade’s 932nd Battalion, from Jerusalem, was killed in an exchange of fire in the area of Shifa Hospital early Monday.
Meanwhile in central Gaza, the IDF said the Nahal Brigade killed several Hamas operatives throughout the day. In one incident, Nahal troops spotted a gunman opening fire at them, and directed a tank to shell the operative, killing him.
In the Khan Younis suburb al-Qarara, in southern Gaza, the IDF said the 7th Armored Brigade and Air Force carried out strikes on several Hamas sites, including an anti-tank launching position used in a recent attack, which did not cause any injuries.
The military released footage showing several recent strikes in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian medical officials said on Tuesday that 14 people were killed in overnight airstrikes in Rafah, as the United States urged a rethink of a promised ground sweep against Hamas holdouts in the refugee-clogged city on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip.
More than a million Palestinians displaced by the five-month-old war between Israel and Hamas have been sheltering in Rafah, which abuts Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Israel says one-sixth of Hamas’s combat strength — four battalions of rifle- and rocket-wielding fighters — is in Rafah and must be crushed before the war can conclude. But the prospect of a spiraling civilian toll has raised alarm abroad.
The IDF had no immediate comment on the overnight strikes on several buildings in the city. Gazan medics said the dead included three women and three children. The identities of the eight men killed were not immediately clear.
With a new round of mediated talks underway in Qatar on a possible release of hostages Hamas took during its grisly October 7 killing spree in Israel that sparked the war, the White House said it would confer with its ally before any troops or tanks move into Rafah.
“Our position is that… a major ground operation there would be a mistake,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday after a call between US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Most importantly, the key goals Israel wants to achieve in Rafah can be done by other means,” Sullivan added, without elaborating. He said Israeli delegates were due in Washington soon to hear US concerns and “lay out an alternative approach.”
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 31,800 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting, a figure that cannot be independently verified and includes some 13,000 Hamas terrorists Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 gunmen inside Israel on October 7.
Also Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the entire Gazan population was experiencing “severe levels of acute food insecurity,” underscoring the urgency of increasing the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
“According to the most respected measure of these things, 100 percent of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity. That’s the first time an entire population has been so classified,” Blinken told a press conference in the Philippines, where he is on an official visit.
A UN-backed assessment described the increasingly dire situation by noting that without a surge of aid, famine would hit the 300,000 people in Gaza’s war-battered north by May. Aid agencies say the Strip must be flooded with food to address the issue.
While aid agencies say Israel is not allowing enough aid into the enclave, Netanyahu’s government says it is facilitating aid and that the UN and relief groups are at fault for issues over the quantity and pace of delivery.
Agencies contributed to this report.