Troops battle Hamas operatives in Khan Younis as IAF strikes RPG-wielding cell

IDF announces death of reservist, bringing Gaza op toll to 220; protesters block humanitarian aid at Kerem Shalom for third consecutive day, calling for release of hostages

IDF troops operate in Gaza in this undated handout photo released January 26, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)
IDF troops operate in Gaza in this undated handout photo released January 26, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

Fighting between Israel Defense Forces and the Hamas terror group continued deep within Khan Younis on Friday, the military said, as families of hostages held by terror groups in the Gaza Strip blocked trucks of aid from entering the enclave via the Kerem Shalom crossing for a third consecutive day.

The IDF also announced the death of a reservist killed during fighting in the Strip on Thursday, bringing the toll of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas to 220. Sgt. Maj. (res.) Eliran Yeger, 36, of the Combat Engineering Corps’ 8170th Battalion, from Tel Aviv, was killed during a gun battle with Hamas operatives in southern Gaza.

In the Khan Younis area, the IDF said Friday that ground forces of the 98th Division killed dozens of Hamas gunmen and the Air Force carried out a wave of strikes overnight Thursday, including apartments used by operatives, weapons depots, observation posts and staging grounds.

In one incident, the division’s Paratroopers Brigade spotted five Hamas gunmen entering a building, and directed an airstrike on them, the IDF said.

On Friday morning, the IDF released drone footage showing a group of RPG-wielding Hamas operatives being spotted in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, before being struck by an aircraft.

The three-man Hamas cell was identified by soldiers of the Border Defense Corps’ 636th Combat Intelligence Collection unit, who also called in the strike. The unit has been operating alongside troops in Khan Younis in recent weeks, locating some 200 tunnel entrances, aiding in destroying more than 130 Hamas sites and nearly a dozen rocket launchers, and targeting numerous Hamas cells, the IDF said.

Nearby, the Maglan unit spotted four Hamas operatives who had fired an anti-tank missile hours earlier, and directed a fighter jet to strike them, the IDF said, adding that several more gunmen were killed by troops in the area.

The Givati Brigade, meanwhile, eliminated a six-man Hamas cell with tank shelling and sniper fire in the Khan Younis area, the IDF said.

In northern Gaza, the military said IAF fighter jets struck several Hamas sites, including a building that was booby-trapped, an anti-tank launch position, and a tunnel shaft, while reservists of the 5th Brigade killed several Hamas gunmen with tank shelling and by directing airstrikes in the area.

The Navy also carried out strikes along the Gaza coast overnight, as part of support for troops of the Nahal Brigade who are maneuvering in the Strip, according to the IDF.

Sgt. Maj. (res.) Eliran Yeger. (Courtesy)

As the ground offensive aimed at toppling Hamas expands, the IDF called on residents of several neighborhoods in western Khan Younis to evacuate to the nearby al-Mawasi area in southern Gaza.

The IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee published a map of the zones that need to be evacuated alongside the announcement, which included the al-Nasr and al-Amal neighborhoods, the Khan Younis refugee camp, and the city center.

Meanwhile, hundreds more protesters were expected to join a demonstration at the Kerem Shalom border crossing throughout the day on Friday, to demand that all humanitarian aid entering the war-torn strip be cut off until the remaining hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 are freed and returned to Israel.

The captives have been held since 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 over 250 hostages of all ages, mostly civilians.

Vowing to destroy the terror group, Israel launched a wide-scale military campaign, which the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says has killed over 26,000 people and wounded some 64,000 people. The figures are unverified and are believed to include close to 10,000 Hamas operatives Israel said it has killed during fighting in the Strip, as well as civilians killed by misfired Palestinian rockets.

On Thursday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that more than 100 Hamas operatives had been captured by Israeli troops in Gaza in recent days, including some who surrendered after hiding in tunnels.

“Hamas is collapsing into its own tunnels that it painstakingly dug. Every place it thought would be a trap for IDF soldiers becomes an area where we hit it,” Gallant said to soldiers of the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit during a visit to their base in southern Israel.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant meets with IDF soldiers on January 25, 2024. (Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry)

Gallant said Hamas has “hundreds of casualties underground” as a result of Yahalom’s actions.

“In the past day and a half, we have over 100 captives, some of them who came up from underground, in the Khan Younis area and also in other places, because they realize that they can’t fight against the IDF,” he said.

According to the IDF, the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 has interrogated some 2,300 Palestinian suspects in Gaza, many of whom, suspected terror operatives, have been arrested and brought to Israel for further questioning.

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