IDF troops opened fire on a group of dozens of Palestinians who approached the border in the northern Gaza Strip, near the community of Nahal Oz, on Sunday as Israel warned there would be zero tolerance for Palestinians approaching troops who pulled back to a buffer zone along the frontier.
The suspects reached just a few hundred meters from troops, who were stationed in the buffer zone. The IDF said the forces moved forward with military vehicles and fired warning shots.
As a result, several of the suspects were hit, and the group withdrew, the military said.
Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency, said there were “three martyrs and several injured as a result of Israeli occupation forces opening fire on civilians in the eastern areas of Gaza City.”
He urged residents to avoid the eastern areas and Israeli military positions, emphasizing the importance of following official directives.
Defense Minister Israel Katz, responding to the incident, said there would be zero tolerance for Gazans approaching the border with Israel.
“Israel’s defense policy with Gaza is clear: Anyone who enters the buffer zone puts their life at risk,” Katz said in a statement.
“There will be zero tolerance for anyone who poses a threat to IDF troops or the [border] fence and communities. We will not return to the reality of October 7,” he added.
The IDF has warned Palestinians against approaching the Israeli border and a buffer zone inside Gaza where troops are deployed.
In a separate incident on Sunday, a Palestinian woman was reportedly killed east of the Khan Younis suburb of Al-Qarara in southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Qatari “Al Araby al Jadeed” newspaper also reported on Sunday that a high-level Israeli military delegation had traveled to Cairo on Friday to discuss security arrangements along the Israel-Egypt border.
The events on Sunday came after Israeli forces withdrew from the entire Netzarim Corridor in the central Gaza Strip overnight Saturday-Sunday, in accordance with the recent ceasefire-hostage deal with the Hamas terror group.
According to the outline of the agreement, on day 21 of the ceasefire, Israel was required to withdraw from the entire corridor and only maintain a presence in a buffer zone of up to around one kilometer along Gaza’s border with Israel.
Israeli forces are still deployed to the Philadelphi Corridor in the Egypt-Gaza border area. Under the deal, on day 50 of the ceasefire, Israel will need to complete its withdrawal from Philadelphi.
The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from the enclave, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
The terror group has so far released 16 hostages — civilians, soldiers and five Thai nationals — during the ceasefire, which began in January, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including many terror convicts.
Hamas freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued alive by troops, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.