An Israeli officer was killed and several others were wounded by a failed airstrike in southern Gaza on Monday morning, the military said, as troops pressed on with operations across the Strip.

The soldier was named as Lt. Shahar Ben Nun, 21, a team commander in the Paratroopers Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, from Petah Tikva.

In addition to the dead officer, another three soldiers were moderately wounded and three others were listed in good condition after the incident.

According to an initial IDF probe, at around 6:30 a.m., Israeli Air Force F-15 fighter jets struck two targets in the Khan Younis area.

One of the missiles successfully hit its target. The second missile, due to a technical issue, did not correctly glide to the intended target and instead struck a multi-story building where the paratroopers were stationed.

The building was some 300 meters away from the intended target, the probe found.

The missile struck one of the apartments in the upper floors of the building. The soldiers in an adjacent apartment were hurt after part of the building collapsed on them.

The malfunction was a technical one, and not caused by human error, according to the initial probe.

The IAF said that the incident was an outlier, and it had not seen such a malfunction before. Tens of thousands of munitions have been fired from fighter jets amid the war in Gaza, with no comparable malfunctions, according to the military.

The incident came as the IDF’s 98th Division returned this week to operate in the Hamad Town residential complex in Khan Younis, while also operating for the first time in the Deir al-Balah area.

The latest operation in Khan Younis and the outskirts of Deir al-Balah came following rocket fire and other intelligence that the IDF said indicated Hamas’s presence in the area.

So far, dozens of sites belonging to terror groups have been destroyed, and several cells of gunmen were killed amid the operation, according to the IDF.

On Monday, the military said a drone struck and killed a Hamas terrorist who fired rockets a day earlier at the border community of Ein Hashlosha.

The division’s Paratroopers Brigade was operating in the Hamad Town neighborhood and other areas of western Khan Younis, where the IDF said soldiers were searching for tunnels.

On Sunday, a soldier with the Paratroopers Brigade’s 202nd Battalion was seriously wounded by RPG fire in the Hamad area, the IDF said.

The military operated in Hamad for the first time earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the division’s 7th Armored Brigade was conducting operations in Khan Younis and on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah, the IDF said, the latter of which is an area that ground forces have mostly not yet operated in.

The IDF carried out a very limited operation in eastern Deir al-Balah in June, as part of preparations for a hostage rescue mission in Nuseirat.

On Monday, the military announced that a kilometer-and-a-half (nearly a mile) tunnel was recently demolished by combat engineers in the Khan Younis area.

Hamas terror operatives fled the tunnel as troops of the 7th Brigade approached the area, the IDF said. The 603rd Combat Engineering Battalion and elite Yahalom unit later demolished the tunnel.

According to the military, inside the tunnel, troops found weapons and other equipment that would have enabled the Hamas operatives to whom they belonged to remain underground for long periods.

Other Hamas sites, both above and below ground, have been located in the Khan Younis area, the IDF said, including a facility found by the 603rd Battalion with dozens of rockets, launchers and anti-tank projectiles.

On Sunday, Hamas fired rockets from a civilian environment in the southern Gaza Strip. According to the army, the rocket launchers were positioned adjacent to two schools, a cemetery and a field hospital.

Meanwhile, in Rafah, the IDF said Monday that troops with the 162nd Division killed dozens of gunmen during fighting in the Tel Sultan neighborhood. The troops also located weapons and destroyed sites belonging to terror groups, the military said.

In the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza, reservists with the 252nd Division directed airstrikes on two Hamas operatives and a command room in the area, the IDF added.

Israel launched its war against Hamas in Gaza following the terror group’s onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, during which it killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, 111 of whom are believed to still be held in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 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 17,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 335.