3 soldiers killed, 12 injured in Gaza as Hamas fires on troops prepping to leave Strip
Military says soldiers came under fire while boarding armored truck in Jabalia; Palestinians say at least 6 killed in Israeli strikes in past day
Three soldiers were killed and 12 others were wounded in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces announced, amid the ongoing war against Hamas.
The slain troops were named as Staff Sgt. Ido Zano, 20, a combat medic with the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Yehud-Monosson; Staff Sgt. Barak Daniel Halpern, 19, a squad commander in the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Kiryat Ono; and Sgt. Omri Cohen, 19, of the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Ashdod.
In the same incident, 12 soldiers were wounded, including a Givati reservist and a member of the Artillery Corps’ Sky Riders Unit who were in serious condition, the military added.
According to an initial IDF probe, the incident took place on Monday morning at an IDF encampment in Jabalia, as the troops were getting ready to head out of the Strip for a furlough.
The troops were boarding a lightly armored truck used to transport troops when Hamas operatives launched anti-tank projectiles and opened fire at them.
The military said it was further investigating the incident, which came amid an IDF offensive against Hamas in the Strip’s far northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun launched in early September.
So far, the military estimates that it has killed at least 1,750 operatives during the recent operation, while another 1,300 have been detained, and around 90,000 civilians evacuated from the area.
Thirty-four IDF soldiers have been killed so far in the operation.
The incident in Jabalia came as Palestinian medical officials said at least six people were killed in an Israeli strike in central Gaza overnight Monday, including a woman.
The Al-Aqsa Hospital compound in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah said Raed Ghabaien, who was released from Israeli detention in 2014, was among the dead. He was killed along with his wife when an Israeli strike hit their tent in the central town of Zuweida, according to hospital records.
An Associated Press journalist who counted the bodies at the hospital’s morgue said that two other people were killed in a strike that hit their house late Sunday in the Nuseirat camp and another two were killed in a strike in the Wadi Gaza area early Monday.
The IDF did not comment on the specific reports of strikes Monday, which came as Israel was preparing for potential chaos on the northern front, following the lightning-fast fall of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 44,000 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 says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists 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.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
