IDF says troops still battling Hamas in northern Gaza

The IDF says it carried out strikes from the air, ground, and sea against some 200 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip over the past day, as fighting continues.

In Gaza City’s Shejaiya, where Hamas’s battalion is believed to be largely defeated, reservists of the Yiftah Brigade identified Hamas operatives running between buildings from which gunfire was previously directed at troops, the IDF says.

The reservists then called in an airstrike against the Hamas operatives, which the IDF says led to secondary blasts, indicating the area was booby-trapped.

Also in northern Gaza, the IDF says troops of the 261st Brigade (the Bahad 1 officers’ school in wartime) spotted two Hamas operatives entering a vehicle and driving to a building used as a weapons depot.

The troops then called in an airstrike against the operatives, and later a fighter jet struck the building, the IDF says.

In the Gaza City neighborhoods of Daraj and Tuffah, the IDF says troops of the 401st Armored Brigade identified a Hamas operative wielding a short-range anti-tank missile.

Tanks in the area shelled the operative before he could open fire, the IDF says.

Hamas’s Daraj-Tuffah battalion is believed by the IDF to be the last standing battalion in northern Gaza, as the military shifts its focus to the southern and central parts of the Strip.