Palestinian fighters say they are “causing deaths and injuries” in attacks using anti-tank rockets and small arms fire.
Palestinian fighters clashed with Israeli forces in heavy fighting in the Shujayea neighborhood north of Gaza City, a day after tanks and troops moved in and forced tens of thousands of terrified civilians to flee.
In a statement released Friday, the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said it had detonated a booby-trapped residential building in Shujayea, killing four Israeli soldiers and wounding five others.
The improvised explosive device used was an unexploded F-16 missile recovered intact after being fired from an Israeli warplane, he said.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said its fighters also continued to engage in “violent clashes” while “inflicting deaths and injuries” in attacks using anti-tank rockets and weapons fire. light.
The day before, Israeli forces carried out heavy air and artillery attacks and sent armored vehicles into war-ravaged northern Gaza in a new attack after withdrawing in January, saying Hamas had been “dismantled” in the region.
Palestinian civilians are walking, carrying their few belongings, through rubble-strewn streets in the intense summer heat. Israel has displaced at least 60,000 people from Gaza City since Thursday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday.
No official confirmation of the deaths of the Shujayea soldiers was immediately available Friday, but the Israeli military reported that one soldier had been killed and nine wounded in clashes across Gaza in the past 24 hours.
Fighting in Rafah continues
Ground operations backed by airstrikes continue in northern Gaza, killing “dozens” of fighters, the military said Friday. The heavy fighting follows comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week suggesting the “intense phase” of the war is coming to an end.
Soldiers “began conducting targeted raids” in Shujayea as intelligence indicated “the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area,” the military said in its first details of the operation.
At least 668 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, 2023, including more than 300 since the start of the ground invasion of Gaza. Another 3,953 have been injured.
Israel claims to have killed around 15,000 Palestinian fighters during the nearly nine-month conflict.
Israel lost eight soldiers in a single attack earlier this month in southern Rafah as Hamas fighters ambushed and blew up a military vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade.
Palestinian health authorities said tank shelling in Rafah killed at least 11 people on Friday. Displaced Palestinian families fled what they see as intensified Israeli fire to seek refuge further north, describing chaotic scenes as the fighting grew closer.
One resident said bulldozers in the Shakoush area had piled up sand so Israeli tanks could line up behind them.
“The situation there is very dangerous and many families are moving towards Khan Younis, even from the Mawasi area, because the situation has become dangerous for them,” the anonymous man told the Reuters news agency.
The UN’s Dujarric said the incursions into al-Mawasi – declared an “evacuation zone” by the Israeli military – had caused widespread casualties and displaced at least 5,000 people.
Most of Gaza’s population has been uprooted and much of the territory’s infrastructure destroyed, leaving residents struggling to survive. A UN-backed assessment this week found that nearly 500,000 people in Gaza are suffering from “catastrophic” hunger.
