Two IDF soldiers killed in southern Gaza building collapse, two injured

Two Israeli reserve soldiers were killed in southern Gaza, the military announced Tuesday, as Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel would control security in the Strip after the war.

The slain troops were named as Maj. (res.) Moshiko (Maxim) Rozenwald, 35, and Sgt. First Class. (res.) Alexander Anosov, 26.

Both served in the Combat Engineering Corps’ 7107th Battalion and were both from the central city of Modiin. Rozenwald was a company commander and Anosov was a squad commander.

According to an initial Israel Defense Forces probe, the two soldiers were killed and two others were moderately injured after a building they were in, in the Rafah area, collapsed on Monday afternoon.

The military has assessed that the unstable building, which was already heavily damaged by IDF activity in the area, collapsed due to the movement of tanks on a route close to it.

No explosives or Hamas terror group booby-traps were identified in the area, the probe found.

It took hours for rescue forces to recover their bodies from under the rubble.

Meanwhile, after three months of fighting in southern Lebanon, the IDF’s 98th Division was being redeployed to Gaza, the military said on Monday.

The elite formation of paratrooper and commando units completed its operations in Lebanon on Wednesday last week, and was now readying for future missions in Gaza.

Their return to the enclave comes several weeks after Israel entered a ceasefire in Lebanon with the Hezbollah terror group, and more than fourteen months into the ongoing war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, which started the war on October 7, 2023, when it attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

Also Tuesday, the military said a tunnel in northern Gaza’s Jabalia used by a Hamas cell in an attack that killed three soldiers in October was recently discovered and destroyed.

In the attack on October 10, three reserve soldiers of the 460th Brigade were killed by a roadside bomb.

The IDF said soldiers of the Givati Brigade located the tunnel shaft where the cell had been holed up, which connected to a 500-meter-long underground passage. Combat engineers then demolished the tunnel.

Katz on Tuesday said Israel would maintain security control of Gaza after the war, pushing back on an earlier TV report.

“Once we defeat Hamas’s military power and ruling power in Gaza, Israel will control security in Gaza with full freedom to act, just as in Judea and Samaria,” he said in a statement, using the biblical name for the West Bank.

“We will not allow any terrorist activity against Israeli communities and citizens from Gaza. We will not allow a return to the pre-October 7 reality.”

Katz made the comment after Channel 12 news reported that he told a senior US official in recent days that “Israel doesn’t want either military rule or civil rule over the residents” of Gaza.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said midday Tuesday that Israeli strikes across the enclave had killed at least 14 Palestinians so far that day.

Medics said a strike in the Daraj suburb of Gaza City killed at least eight people from the same family, destroying a building and damaging nearby houses.

Rescuers recovered the bodies of eight people, including two women and four children from under the rubble, the ministry said. Among the dead were a father and his three children, and the children’s grandmother, according to a casualty list obtained by The Associated Press.

Four other people were killed in two separate airstrikes in the city and in the town of Beit Lahiya north of the enclave, medics added.

There was no immediate comment from the IDF.

In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, Israeli tanks pushed deeper in the direction of al-Mawasi, designated a humanitarian zone.

Heavy fire from tanks rolling into the area forced dozens of families sheltering there to flee northwards towards Khan Younis.

The IDF did not issue any new evacuation warnings to civilians in the designated humanitarian zone, however, and there have been no other indications that troops are pushing into the Mawasi area.

The World Health Organization said Monday that a humanitarian team finally reached one of northern Gaza’s only functioning hospitals over the weekend to deliver fuel, food and medicines, and found “appalling” conditions.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X that after multiple attempts, the United Nations health agency and partners reached Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya “two days ago, amid hostilities and explosions in the vicinity of the hospital during the mission.”

The team, he said, had “delivered 5,000 liters of fuel, food and medicines, and transferred three patients and six companions to Al-Shifa,” the Palestinian territory’s main hospital, which has been the site of several battles between Hamas operatives and Israeli soldiers.

Kamal Adwan is one of the last operational medical facilities in the north of the war-ravaged territory, with the WHO warning earlier this month that it was operating at a “minimum” level.

The agency said efforts to deliver desperately needed supplies have been repeatedly hampered.

.@WHO and partners reached Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern #Gaza two days ago, amid hostilities and explosions in the vicinity of the hospital during the mission. The team delivered 5000 liters of fuel, food and medicines, and transferred 3 patients and 6 companions to Al-Shifa… pic.twitter.com/N7V0O824Sq

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 16, 2024

As fighting continued in Gaza, mediated talks continued between Israel and Hamas for a hostage-ceasefire deal.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Hamas had given in to an Israeli demand that the IDF remain in Gaza temporarily, after having previously refused to release any more hostages unless Israel agrees to a full withdrawal from the enclave and an end to the war, which the government has refused.

Israel believes that 96 of the 251 hostages kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, remain in the Strip, a figure that includes the bodies of at least 34 captives confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas released 105 civilians during last November’s truce, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 38 hostages have been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.

Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Monday that more than 45,000 Palestinians had been killed since the outbreak of the war fourteen months ago. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, of whom Israel says it has killed about 18,000 in Gaza, as well as some 1,000 inside Israel during the initial Hamas-led attack.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 388. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor. In addition, some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the Hamas attack last October.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report.