2 soldiers killed in Gaza; IDF defends strike on Palestinians ‘posing as journalists’

Israel says five men killed in overnight attack were Islamic Jihad propagandists, not reporters; German ambassador decries deaths of infants as temperatures in Strip fall

Cpt. (res.) Amit Levi, left, and Maj. Hod Shriebman. (IDF)
Cpt. (res.) Amit Levi, left, and Maj. Hod Shriebman. (IDF)

Two Israel Defense Forces soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip were killed in fighting on Thursday, the army said, as Israeli officials pushed back on claims that five Palestinians who died in an overnight airstrike were journalists.

Cpt. (res.) Amit Levi, 35, from Kibbutz Shomria, a team commander in the 551st Reserve Paratroopers Brigade’s 6551st Battalion, was killed in the morning in central Gaza. The army said it was investigating how Levi was killed.

Maj. Hod Shriebman, 27, from Tzofit, a platoon commander in the elite Multidomain Unit, was killed later in the day in northern Gaza.

Another soldier with the unit was seriously wounded in the same incident, which the military said was also under investigation.

In a separate incident, a tank commander with the 401st Armored Brigade’s 9th Battalion was seriously wounded by sniper fire in northern Gaza.

The soldiers’ deaths raised Israel’s toll in the 14-month-old Gaza offensive to 393.

Palestinian health officials in the Hamas-run Strip, meanwhile, claimed that 38 people had been killed in the enclave over the past 24 hours, taking the overall war death toll to 45,399. The figures, which could not be independently verified, do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Gaza’s Al-Quds Today, a television channel affiliated with the Islamic Jihad terror group, claimed that five killed in an overnight strike were reporters for the outlets.

However, Israel said later Thursday that the group had been “posing as journalists,” when the van they were in was struck.

An Israeli soldier in Gaza in a picture released by the military on December 26, 2024. (IDF Spokesperson)

The IDF said four of the five were involved in the creation and dissemination of combat propaganda for Islamic Jihad, naming them as Ibrahim Jamal Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali, Mohammed Ayad Khamis al-Lada’a, Fadi Ihab Muhammad Ramadan Hassouna and Ayman Nihad Abd Alrahman Jadi, the latter also a former member of the terror group’s naval force.

A graphic released by the military giving details of what it says was five Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists who were killed in an airstrike on December 26, 2024 (IDF)

The fifth man was named as Faisal Abdallah Muhammad Abu Qamsan, the head of Islamic Jihad’s security in Nuseirat.

“Intelligence from multiple sources confirmed that these individuals were Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists,” the army said.

A boy walks past the site of an Israeli strike on a van in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on December 26, 2024. (Eyad BABA / AFP)

The men were identified in a list of Islamic Jihad operatives, which was previously captured by troops in Gaza, the army said.

“This list explicitly identified four of the eliminated individuals as members of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization,” the army said.

Associated Press footage showed the incinerated shell of the van, with press markings still visible on the back doors.

At a funeral for the five outside the hospital, women wept beside the bodies as men performed special prayers before burials. The bodies were all wrapped in white shrouds, with blue press vests draped over them.

Mourners attend the funeral of Gazans killed in an Israeli strike, at the al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on December 26, 2024. Israel denied claims that the five were journalists, saying they ‘posed’ as reporters but were Islamic Jihad fighters. (Eyad BABA / AFP)

“May God take revenge on them, may God take revenge on them. He’s the one that makes the news and broadcasts the crimes to the world, this is what they do to them,” said the mother of Fadi Hassouna.

In a statement, the IDF said that prior to the strike it had taken “numerous steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists says over 130 Palestinian reporters have been killed since the start of the war. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza except on military embeds. Israel has repeatedly documented members of terror groups in Gaza working under the cover of journalists.

Rescuers and civilians stand at the site of an Israeli strike in a residential area in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, on December 26, 2024. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Separately, medics in the enclave said 13 other people were killed and 25 wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood.

In Gaza City, an Israeli strike on a house in the suburb of Sabra killed eight more people, medics said.

In northern Gaza, where much of the fighting has been concentrated since October, the IDF said troops recently demolished a Hamas tunnel that had stretched for two kilometers (1.2 miles) underground.

According to the IDF, Hamas operatives would reside in the tunnel for long periods.

Israeli troops have been battling Hamas and allied terror groups in the Strip for nearly 15 months, after war erupted with the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault on southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and another 251 taken hostage.

Indirect talks aimed at freeing the 100 hostages remaining in Gaza appeared this week to be inching toward a long-elusive agreement, but on Wednesday both sides accused each other of backtracking on previous commitments and torpedoing the negotiations.

Relatives and supporters of Israelis held hostage in Gaza since October 7 attend a sit-in demanding an immediate agreement for the return of all abductees in front of the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, on December 25, 2024 (Jack GUEZ / AFP)

The offensive has caused widespread destruction and driven around 90% of the population of 2.3 million from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are packed into squalid tent camps along the coast, with little protection from the cold, wet winter.

Israel says it takes steps to avoid harm to civilians, blaming Hamas for fighting from schools, hospitals and other areas where Gazans have sought shelter, but has faced heavy international pressure to halt the destruction.

A doctor in southern Gaza reported that three Gazan infants had died from the cold in recent days. Germany’s Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert responded Thursday that if the deaths “don’t move us, then we don’t understand the birth in a manger in Bethlehem or the light of Hanukkah.”

Displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on December 25, 2024 (Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash90)

Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, the head of pediatrics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said Wednesday a three-week-old girl had died of hypothermia after having been brought to the hospital. He said two other infants had also been brought to the hospital after dying of hypothermia over the previous two days.

This “should move us to demand an end of the war and Hamas terror, winter supplies for the Gazans and a full hostage release,” Seibert wrote on X.

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