Israel Defense Forces troops continued to battle Hamas terrorists in all parts of Gaza on Thursday, as air raid alarms marked the first time in almost four days that projectiles were apparently launched from the Strip toward Israel.
Sirens were activated in the evacuated border community of Netiv Ha’asara, with no reports of injuries or damage. The previous alerts near Gaza had sounded on Sunday afternoon.
Israeli troops have come under Hamas rocket and mortar fire during operations inside the Gaza Strip, which have at times also set off alarms in border communities.
The number of rocket attacks on Israeli cities has gone down significantly in recent weeks, as troops push deeper into the Strip.
The IDF said Thursday morning that snipers from the 98th Division’s Paratroopers Brigade had taken out “many terrorists” in the al-Amal neighborhood of Khan Younis, as troops continued to press battles in southern Gaza’s main city.
According to the army, dozens of Hamas operatives were killed in the previous 24 hours, including 10 Hamas gunmen, some of whom were armed with RPGs, killed in two separate airstrikes in Khan Younis.
Troops also “destroyed terror infrastructure and weapons in the area,” the IDF said.
The Maglan commando unit raided several Hamas sites in the southern city, including command centers where operatives were killed by the troops in close-quarters combat, according to the army.
The military published footage that it said shows an attack helicopter striking a building and killing gunmen who had opened fire on reservists of the Yiftah Brigade in central Gaza.
In northern Gaza, where troops were conducting mop-up operations to locate Hamas’s remaining infrastructure, the IDF said reservists of the 5th Brigade had encountered and killed several gunmen, also locating weapons.
On Wednesday, the IDF said it was investigating a deadly strike on a United Nations shelter in southern Gaza that reportedly killed nine people and injured 75, but noted it may have been caused by an errant Hamas rocket.
In their biggest operation in a month, Israeli tanks pushed through Khan Younis, where many Palestinians sheltered after leaving the north — the early focus of the war. Large numbers of Palestinians have now moved further south to Rafah, per Israeli instructions.
The IDF’s main target appears to be the area around Khan Younis’s long-standing refugee camp, which includes the Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals and also the UNRWA training center that was hit on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a small group of Israeli protesters, including relatives of hostages held in Gaza, attempted to reach the Kerem Shalom crossing in order to picket trucks going in, demanding that aid be cut off until the captives are freed.
A day earlier, protesters successfully blocked the crossing for hours, preventing the entry of 51 aid trucks.
Part of Thursday’s group was initially stopped by a roadblock but then made it through, walking several kilometers toward the crossing for the second day in a row. Other protesters were reportedly at the crossing already.
Among the approximately three dozen protesting was Danny Elgarat, a former Ashdod police commander whose brother Itzik Elgarat and brother-in-law Alex Danzig were kidnapped from Nir Oz.
“Nobody can stop us… from blocking the trucks in Gaza,” Elgarat said. “The prime minister didn’t do it, so we will do it instead of him.”
Israel has razed nearly 40 percent of the 2,824 buildings in Gaza located within a kilometer of the border, according to a Hebrew University study cited by The Wall Street Journal.
The demolition moves appeared to be part of a plan to build a kilometer-wide (0.6-mile) buffer zone inside the Strip.
Near Khan Younis, where the border zone is most densely populated, some 67 percent of buildings have been destroyed, according to the study by Prof. Adi Ben Nun, who analyzed satellite data to arrive at the figures.
Current and former officials told the Journal that some structures within the planned zone, which will vary in width depending on various factors, may be left in place.
At least 25,700 Gazans have been killed in the war, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said Wednesday, an unverified figure which is believed to include close to 10,000 Hamas operatives Israel said it has killed during fighting in the Strip, as well as civilians killed by misfired Palestinian rockets. Two hundred and nineteen IDF soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive.
Israel launched its offensive on Hamas following the terror group’s murderous rampage through communities and a music festival in southern Israel on October 7, in which it killed close to 1,200 people and took another 253 hostages, 132 of whom are believed to still be held captive in Gaza.
Eli Katzoff contributed to this report.