Author: James McKenzie and Nidal Mugrabi
JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) – Eight Israeli soldiers were killed in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, the military said, as troops continued to advance into and around the southern city of Rafah and launched attacks in several areas of Gaza, killing at least 19 Palestinians died.
The military said the soldiers, who were members of a combat engineering unit, were traveling in an armored vehicle that exploded when engineering materials they were carrying detonated, an apparent violation of standard practice. The incident, which allegedly occurred early in the morning in the Tel al-Sultan area west of Rafah, is under investigation.
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas said the vehicle became trapped in a prepared minefield, triggering the explosion.
Israeli tanks advanced on Ter-Sultan and shells fell on the coastal area where thousands of Palestinians, many of whom have been displaced multiple times, have sought refuge.
Despite growing international pressure for a ceasefire, more than eight months since the war broke out in October, a ceasefire agreement still seems elusive, with cross-border fighting with Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon intensifying almost daily.
Residents said Israeli air strikes on two houses on the outskirts of Gaza City killed at least 15 people. Medics said four other people were killed in multiple attacks in the south.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that its forces had seized a large cache of weapons in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt, both on the ground and hidden in an extensive network of tunnels built by Hamas.
According to reports, militants fired five rockets from the humanitarian area in central Gaza on Friday, two of which landed in open areas in Israel and three in Gaza.
“This is another example of terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip using humanitarian infrastructure and civilians as human shields to carry out terrorist attacks,” the military said.
protest
The soldier’s death could complicate the political situation facing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who quit the government a week after centrist former general Benny Gantz quit the government, accusing him of not having a proper strategy for Gaza.
Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday in the latest weekly protest by family members and supporters of Hamas hostages, demanding a deal to bring them home.
Netanyahu said in a video statement released late Saturday that he had no choice but to stick to the war objectives of defeating Hamas and bringing back the hostages.
While surveys show the Israeli public strongly supports continuing the war against Hamas, the protests have highlighted divisions in Israeli society that have resurfaced after a period of unity at the start of the war.
The Islamic jihadist militant group Quds Force said on Saturday that Israel could only recapture the hostages in Gaza by ending the war and withdrawing its troops from the enclave.
Islamic Jihad is a smaller ally of Hamas, which launched a riot in southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli statistics. More than 100 hostages are believed to be still being held in Gaza, but Israeli authorities have absenteely announced the deaths of at least 40 hostages.
Since a week-long truce in November, Hamas has insisted on a permanent end to the war and demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza after repeated attempts to arrange a ceasefire ended in failure. Netanyahu refuses to end the war until Hamas is eliminated.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 37,296 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operation to eliminate Hamas, at least 30 of them in the past 24 hours.
