The Israeli military said Saturday that four soldiers were killed in fighting north of the Gaza Strip, ending more than 15 months of its war with Hamas militants.
The number of soldiers killed in the Palestinian territory has risen to 403 since Israel launched ground attacks in response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
The United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and others have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.
An officer and a reserve soldier were “seriously injured” during the same incident and were taken to hospital, the army said in a statement.
The army said on Saturday it had killed three militants in a ground operation near Jabaliya in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have been waging an intense offensive since the beginning of October. The army said the aim was to prevent Hamas from regrouping. To stop from.
Gaza’s civil protection agency said it had counted eight people killed, including two children, in an Israeli airstrike on a school-shelter site near Jabaliya. Defense agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal confirmed that eight people, including two children and two women, were killed in Israeli shelling on the Halawa school in the northern Gaza city of Jabaliya.
Bassel said 30 people, including 19 children, were injured in the attack and that the Halawa school housed “thousands of displaced people”.
The Israeli military acknowledged in a statement that it attacked the facility.
It said the Air Force “launched a precision strike on terrorists at a command-and-control center” that previously served as Halwa School in Jabaliya.
It said it targeted the campus because “the school was used by Hamas terrorists to plan and carry out attacks.”
The attack was the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where fighting has raged for more than 14 months.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 46,537 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run health ministry. The United Nations has considered these figures reliable.
The attack on 7 October resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 people on the Israeli side, the majority of whom were civilians. About 250 people were taken hostage, with about 100 still being held in Gaza, although at least a third of them are believed dead.
On Saturday, Hamas responded to Sharon Cunio, who addressed the group directly in Arabic in a video on Friday. She asked for a sign that her husband David was still alive, more than 450 days after he was taken to the Palestinian territories.
Hamas said in its response that her husband’s fate depends on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said, “Netanyahu has not yet decided. Time is running out.”
Stop-start talks are underway to end the devastating war and release the remaining hostages, with the latest round starting last weekend in Qatar.