As many as five Israeli forces have been killed and 14 others wounded, two of them seriously, during a resistance operation targeting an Israeli infantry unit in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military reported the development on Tuesday, saying it had targeted infantry forces from the military’s Netzah Yehuda Battalion in the city of Beit Hanoun a day earlier.
"The infantry soldiers were hit by a bomb planted on the side of a road shortly after 10 p.m. (1900GMT) on Monday, during ground operations in Beit Hanoun,” it said.
“The soldiers were operating on foot, and were not inside a vehicle,” the military added.
According to the report, more casualties were caused among the forces after resistance fighters began complicating the military’s rescue operations aimed at reaching out to those who had already been affected.
“The evacuation became complicated and prolonged, and additional rescue forces were called,” it added.
Hamas warns Israel of ‘more losses, more captives’
Abu Obeida, spokesman for al-Qassam Brigades, the Gaza-headquartered Palestinian resistance movement Hamas’ armed wing, meanwhile, commended the operation.
“The complex Beit Hanoun operation is an additional blow delivered by our mighty fighters to the prestige of the frail occupation army and its most criminal units in a field that the occupation thought was safe after it left no stone unturned.”
He credited resistance fighters for the “battle of attrition” they were waging against the invading Israeli forces throughout Gaza’s entire expanse.
The battle, he said, would go on to inflict additional losses on the invaders every day.
According to the official, the regime was able to rescue some of its forces from the “hell” created by the fighters, but only “miraculously.”
“It may fail to do so later, and additional prisoners will fall into our hands.”
‘Netanyahu would be a fool to retain deployment’
Elsewhere in his remarks, Abu Obeida said it was the Palestinians’ steadfastness and bravery that determined the equations on the ground throughout the warfare rather than the regime’s forces and firepower.
“The most foolish decision Netanyahu can make would be to keep his forces inside the Gaza Strip.”
The report came less than a week after the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement of the Islamic Jihad’s armed wing announced either killing or injuring at least 40 Israeli forces during a complex ambush targeting various groups of the troops in northern Gaza.
Al-Quds Brigades, as the military wing is named, said the ambush targeted the forces in Gaza City’s Shuja'iyyah neighborhood.
Among other tactics, the operation would target large groups of the Israeli forces hiding out inside residential buildings.
The Israeli regime launched a genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023 in response to a heroic resistance operation targeting the occupied Palestinian territories.
The brutal military onslaught has so far claimed the lives of more than 57,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, throughout the already impoverished coastal sliver.
The regime has also tightened its nearly two-decade-old siege on Gaza to draconian proportions, reducing the flow of aid supplies into the territory to barely a trickle and using starvation as a method of warfare.
Source: Press TV
