An IDF soldier was killed during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip earlier Thursday, the military announced, bringing Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and military operations along the border with the Strip to 380.
The slain soldier was named as Staff Sgt. Ron Epshtein, 19, of the Givati Brigade’s Tzabar Battalion, from Nesher.
According to a military source, Epshtein was killed by shrapnel from an artillery shell that was fired at the Jabalia area amid an ongoing operation there. Another two soldiers were lightly wounded in the incident.
Separately on Wednesday, an IDF soldier with the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion was seriously wounded in the northern Gaza Strip, the IDF said.
The soldier was taken to the hospital for medical treatment, it added.
Earlier on Thursday, a rocket launched from the southern Gaza Strip at the Israeli border community of Keren Shalom was intercepted by air defenses on, the IDF said.
Sirens sounded in Kerem Shalom amid the incident. There were no reports of injuries.
Inside Gaza, dozens were killed or unaccounted for after a series of Israeli strikes, health authorities, Hamas-linked officials and witnesses said Thursday.
One strike near the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north of the territory left “dozens of people” dead or missing, the facility’s director Hossam Abu Safiya tells AFP.
Israel has said there has been regular Hamas activity at the northern Gaza hospital.
Another strike was reported in a neighborhood of Gaza City, with civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal saying 22 were dead.
“There is a headless body. We don’t yet know who this is,” Moataz al-Arouqi, who lives in the area, told AFP.
The IDF has not issued any comment on the matter.
COGAT, Israel’s civilian coordination agency for the Palestinian territories, said Wednesday that some 7 tons (7,200 kilograms) of humanitarian aid was delivered to the Gaza Strip today by eight Jordanian Air Force helicopters for the first time.
In a statement, the IDF said that the transfer was carried out as part of Israel’s “effort to increase the volume and routes of aid entering Gaza.”
It said that the aid delivery was comprised of hygiene and sanitation supplies, food, baby formula, medical equipment, and 30 different medications.
The Jordanian military said the aid was being delivered to Al-Qarara, an area near Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, where it would then be handed over to the World Food Program for distribution.
“Code-word today is hunger everywhere in Gaza. Looters are sharing the occupation’s war against the displaced,” said Tamer, a Gaza City man now living alongside hundreds of thousands of people who have crowded into Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
The International Criminal Court dismissed these efforts Thursday, issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza, on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, which the court’s top prosecutor Karim Khan alleges were committed during the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.
The warrants were strongly denounced by Israel, with Netanyahu slamming them as a “modern day Dreyfus trial.”
The war in Gaza erupted when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, and seizing 251 hostages.
Israel then launched a military operation aimed at eliminating the terror group and rescue the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.