IDF reservist killed, three wounded during fighting in northern Gaza

An Israeli reserve soldier was killed and three others were wounded during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, the military announced.

The Israel Defense Forces later named the slain soldier as Master Sgt. (res.) Asaf Cafri, 26, a tank driver in the 14th Reserve Armored Brigade’s 79th Battalion, from Beit Hashmonai.

In the same incident, a reservist in the 79th Battalion and an officer in the elite Yahalom combat engineering were seriously wounded. Another reservist, in the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade’s 8239th Battalion, was moderately hurt.

According to an initial IDF probe, Cafri, who was outside his tank, was hit by sniper fire in the Beit Hanoun area, close to one of the military’s posts in the Israeli-held buffer zone.

The other troops next to him were hit by anti-tank fire launched by the terror operatives, according to the initial investigation.

The cell behind the attack apparently managed to flee.

Cafri’s great-grandmother, 96-year-old Holocaust survivor Magda Baratz, was attending a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany at the time of his death, Cafri’s aunt Hadas told the Ynet news site.

The Israel-based Baratz, who survived the infamous Nazi camp in her youth, was visiting as a guest of honor. She traveled there with her grandson Hagai, Cafri’s father.

According to Ynet, Hagai only learned of his son’s death upon his return to Israel.

“Asaf fell when his great-grandmother and family flew to the ceremony,” said Hadas. “She said that visiting the camp where she almost died was her victory. She managed to survive, came to Israel, and started a family and legacy.”

Thursday’s deadly incident took place not far from an attack on Saturday, in which Hamas operatives opened fire on an unarmored army vehicle, seriously wounding three soldiers, before planting a bomb in the area, which killed a soldier and seriously injured another.

That soldier, Warrant Officer G’haleb Sliman Alnasasra, was the first soldier to be killed since the IDF resumed its offensive against Hamas in Gaza lsat month.

Hours before announcing the death of the tank driver on Thursday, the IDF issued an evacuation warning to Palestinians residing in Beit Hanoun and the Sheikh Zayed neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip.

In a post on X, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee published a map of the area that was to be evacuated, saying the warning came in light of sniper attacks on troops and other activity by terror groups in the area.

Palestinians were called upon to head for Gaza City.

Also Thursday, the IDF and Shin Bet said an airstrike in northern Gaza’s Jabalia a short while ago targeted a group of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives at a command center used by the terror groups.

Palestinian media reported that the strike targeted Jabalia’s former police station, and that at least nine people were killed.

According to the IDF, the site was used by the terror operatives to plan and carry out attacks on Israeli civilians and troops.

The IDF said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm in the strike, including the use of a “precision munition, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”

“The terror organizations systematically violate international law while taking over civilian infrastructure, and while brutally exploiting the civilian population as a human shield for its terror attacks,” the military added.

Meanwhile, video from the center of Gaza City showed an injured child among rubble, reportedly following an Israeli airstrike.

Osama Abu Rabee, a journalist in Gaza, published footage showing a wounded and bleeding child among the rubble of a building.

The body of a man can be seen behind the child, who is calling for help.

Abu Rabee also claimed that there were additional bodies of children on the scene of the strike.

According to reports from Gaza, the building was hit by an Israeli airstrike.

The Saudi Al-Arabiya channel reported that seven people were killed in the strike.

The IDF said it was looking into the incident.

The war began with the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion that killed over 1,200 people and saw the kidnapping of 251 hostages back to Gaza. Fifty-nine of the 251 taken as hostages remain in captivity, of whom 24 are believed to still be alive.

According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, more than 51,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel assesses it has killed about 20,000 combatants in Gaza as of January, as well as some 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 412. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and two Defense Ministry civilian contractors.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.