At least 10 Palestinians were reported killed in Israeli strikes on Friday night and Saturday, with the Israel Defense Forces saying they included several terror operatives.
Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was severely wounded in an “operational accident” in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday, the military announced. The incident occurred during bulldozing work in the area. The military said the soldier was taken to a hospital in serious condition and his family was notified.
In southern Gaza, the IDF killed Mahmoud Barim, a member of the Mujahideen Brigades terror group, who the military said had been carrying out surveillance on troops and “possessed a large amount of weaponry.
In northern Gaza, the IDF killed Ahmad Muhammad Saleh, a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force, “who had advanced several terror attack plans against IDF troops,” the military said.
The strike targeting Saleh also killed several more Hamas operatives, it added, saying: “The terrorists posed a real threat to IDF troops and were eliminated in precise strikes.”
On Saturday, the IDF said troops stationed in northern Gaza killed a Palestinian terror operative who crossed the ceasefire line.
The operative approached reservists of the 205th “Iron Fist” Armored Brigade “in a manner that posed an immediate threat,” the military said, adding that the troops “eliminated the terrorist to remove the threat.”
Additionally, the Hamas-run Gaza civil defense service said that Israeli airstrikes in the Palestinian territory had killed seven people overnight into Saturday.
Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the group, which operates under the authority of the Hamas terror group, said an Israeli drone had fired two missiles close to a police post in the Al-Bureij refugee camp.
In addition to the seven dead, he said, several more people were wounded, four of them critically.
The Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza said Saturday that it had received six bodies and seven wounded, “including four in a critical condition because of direct impacts to the face, torso and other parts of the body.”
The nearby al-Awda hospital said it had received one fatality and two wounded.
The figures did not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
In response to a query by The Times of Israel, the military said it had struck an armed cell of Hamas gunmen whose members had “approached the Yellow Line” and planned to carry out an “imminent” attack on Israeli forces stationed in the area.
Hamas and Israel have traded blame for violations of the ceasefire agreed last October, which halted two years of full-blown war.
The Gaza health ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, says Israeli fire has killed at least 700 people since the ceasefire began, though it does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The figures cannot be independently verified.
Four IDF soldiers have been killed in attacks by Gazans over the same period. A fifth soldier was killed in a friendly fire incident.
Source:
www.timesofisrael.com
