An IDF officer who was wounded during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip earlier this month succumbed to his wounds, the military announced on Monday evening, bringing Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and military operations along the border with the Strip to 363.
Maj. Guy Yaacov Nezri, 25, a company commander in the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd Battalion, from Atlit, was seriously wounded on October 19 during fighting in Jabalia.
He was wounded in the same incident in which Staff Sgt. Ofir Berkovich and Sgt. Elishai Young were killed. An IDF probe found that the soldiers were hit by anti-tank fire.
The announcement came as the IDF said that it hit over 150 terror targets in Gaza and Lebanon over the past day, including dozens of gunmen killed by security forces in both theaters of operations, and large amounts of weaponry destroyed.
In Gaza, troops killed Hamas gunmen attempting to plant bombs near troops and eliminated several other cells who were a threat to the soldiers, the IDF said on Tuesday morning.
Hamas-run authorities in Gaza said on Tuesday that an overnight Israeli airstrike killed more than 55 people in a residential building in the northern district of Beit Lahiya. Tolls provided by Hamas cannot be verified and do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
“More than 55 people have been martyred and dozens more wounded are under the rubble of a five-story residential building belonging to the Abu Nasr family that was hit by the Israeli occupation last night in Beit Lahiya,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
There was no immediate comment from the IDF on the strike. 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.
Meanwhile, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday that humanitarian assistance was not reaching Palestinian civilians in Jabalia.
The IDF has been operating in the northern Gaza neighborhood and several other surrounding towns in order to thwart what it says has been a resurgence of Hamas activity. The operations have involved mass evacuations of Palestinians and an initial two weeks during which aid was blocked from reaching the area.
This led to international alarm that Israel was implementing the so-called General’s Plan to lay siege to northern Gaza. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly clarify that this is not Israel’s policy. While the premier assured him that it was not, he declined to make a public statement, a US official told The Times of Israel.
Miller noted the assurance received by Netanyahu, adding that the US is following the matter closely and has seen some improvement in the amount of aid reaching northern Gaza over the past two weeks.
But Jabalia, in particular, continues to not receive aid, Miller said. “We don’t accept that… and we want to see that change.”
The State Department spokesperson noted that Israel will have to address such issues if it wants to remain in compliance with US law regarding the receipt of US offensive weapons.
The issue was raised in a letter that the US sent Israel on October 13, warning that it had 30 days to take a series of steps to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“At this point, they’re not meeting all the conditions of the letter,” Miller said.
One of the issues raised in the letter was then-pending Knesset legislation to bar the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants from operating in Israel, which was passed on Monday evening despite cautions from the US.
Israel alleges that more than 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza have ties to terrorist factions and that educational facilities under the organization’s auspices consistently incite hatred of Israel and glorify terror.
In February, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters. The IDF has also repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and gunmen hiding out in UNRWA schools.
“UNRWA workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable,” Netanyahu said.
The vote came as Hamas-run emergency services said IDF tanks thrust deeper into northern Gaza, trapping 100,000 civilians in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies. The number could not be independently verified.
North Gaza’s three major hospitals, whose officials refused Israel’s orders to evacuate, were said to be hardly operating. At least two were damaged and had run out of medical, food and fuel stocks.
Only a few families headed toward southern Gaza as the majority preferred to relocate temporarily in Gaza City, fearing they could otherwise never regain access to their homes.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, amid many acts of brutality and sexual assault.
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 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Talks led by the US, Egypt, and Qatar to broker a ceasefire resumed this week after multiple abortive attempts. Egypt’s president proposed a two-day truce in exchange for some of the 97 hostages still held by Hamas for Palestinian security prisoners, followed by talks within 10 days on a permanent ceasefire.
Israel has repeatedly said the war will go on until Hamas is eradicated while the Palestinian terror group has ruled out any end to fighting until IDF forces leave Gaza.