In the Gaza Strip, Hamas rocket attacks on Monday destroyed two buildings that Israeli forces were sabotaging, killing 21 Israeli soldiers. This was Israel's worst military incident since the start of the war.
Three soldiers were also killed in fighting in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling Monday “one of the most difficult days” of the war.
The 21 fallen soldiers were on Monday more than a third of a mile from the Israeli border city of Kisfim, where troops were preparing to plant explosives and blow up two Hamas strongholds. The Times of Israel reported.
Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Maj. Gen. Daniel Hagari said Tuesday that the soldiers were finishing up a mission when terrorists appeared and fired rocket-propelled grenades at tanks protecting soldiers on the ground.
IDF sources said the explosion killed at least two soldiers and injured several others, and that subsequent explosions detonated mines placed by the military around two buildings.
“The explosion destroyed the building, but most of the troops were inside and nearby,” Hagari told reporters.
Hagari said the mine explosion was still under investigation, but noted that it was likely caused by a second RPG fired at the troops.
According to the Israeli military, the dead soldiers were members of the IDF's 205th and 261st Brigades and ranged in age from 22 to 40.
Lieutenant Colonel Herzi Halevi, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said in a statement about the fallen: “These are the best sons of this country who volunteered to defend their homeland and paid the highest price.” “We share their family's sadness at the tremendous loss, and we know that the pain is too much for them to bear.”
Halevi added that the mission the soldiers were carrying out was to ensure that Hamas could no longer operate in the area and to facilitate the return of Palestinian and Israeli populations displaced by the war.
The incident is the deadliest incident for the Israel Defense Forces since it began its ground invasion of Gaza. The death toll for Israeli forces since putting their boots on the ground now stands at 219.
In addition to the 21 soldiers killed near the border, three more soldiers were killed in Monday's attack on Khan Yunis, the largest city in southern Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Monday as “one of the most difficult days” of the war, with 20 people killed within 24 hours.
“In the name of our heroes and for our lives, we will not stop fighting until we have won absolute victory.”
To this end, Israeli forces are currently besieging Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. The city has recently seen the heaviest fighting since December, with the IDF focused on removing Hamas from the area and finding and rescuing the more than 130 hostages remaining in Gaza.
The newspaper said the attack on Khan Yunis, which began on Sunday, was led by the 98th Division, whose soldiers led a series of airstrikes on Hamas positions and confronted the militant group on the ground.
After hundreds of thousands of people fled into the city during the peak of fighting in northern Gaza, the fighting in Khan Yunis is once again forcing countless Palestinians to flee further south or west.
Heavy shelling and gunfights in southern Gaza are likely to continue, as the temporary cease-fire agreement offered by Israel is still “far from a proposal.” An Israeli official with knowledge of the talks told CNN on Tuesday..
Israel's tentative proposal to release all Gaza hostages in stages in exchange for a two-month ceasefire is currently only a “measure to see if the framework will work,” officials said. said, “Many people need to take steps first.''
The reported agreement flatly rejects Hamas's two biggest demands: the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and the withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza.
As fighting in Gaza intensifies, the risk of war in the region also increases, with Yemen's Houthi terrorist group, which is sympathetic to Hamas, vowing to carry out nighttime air strikes on some of its strongholds led by the United States and Britain. There is. There's nothing you can't answer. ”
The group claimed that Western allies launched 18 airstrikes in the region, with 12 airstrikes carried out on the capital Sanaa and four governorates damaged.
The United States and Britain said in a statement that airstrikes in Yemen had only damaged eight locations.
Western countries are expected to announce new sanctions against the Houthis within days after redesignating them as a terrorist organization, which has repeatedly attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea in a show of solidarity with Hamas.
“We will use the most effective means at our disposal to cut off the Houthi funding that is funding these attacks,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told parliament on Tuesday. Ta.
with post wire
