The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday announced the death of a soldier during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip over the weekend, bringing the toll of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas to 195, as Israel’s war against the terror group entered its 107th day.
The fallen soldier was named as Sgt. First Class (res.) Uriel Aviad Silberman, 23, of the Kiryati Brigade’s 7421st Battalion, from Nehalim. The army said that another officer and a soldier of the same battalion were seriously wounded in the same battle.
Also in southern Gaza, the IDF said on Sunday morning that in a joint operation between the Israeli Air Force and snipers of the Commando Brigade, numerous Hamas operatives were killed.
In the Gaza City neighborhoods of Daraj and Tuffah, the IDF said the 401st Armored Brigade battled Hamas operatives, killing some 15, and raided a building used by the terror group, where soldiers found weapons.
On Saturday evening, the military released video showing the inside of a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis where it said Israeli hostages had previously been held by Hamas.
The military said the tunnel, which had a central space as well as five barred cells, was approximately 830 meters (half a mile) in length, and was dug 20 meters (66 feet) below the ground. The entrance to the tunnel was from inside the home of a Hamas terrorist, the military added.
Elsewhere in Gaza, the navy struck a building in the central Gaza Strip where a number of Hamas operatives were readying to ambush troops, the military said, adding that the navy identified the threat and, together with the 179th Reserve Armored Brigade, struck the operatives.
The war erupted when Hamas-led terrorists burst into Israel and invaded southern communities on October 7, massacring some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping over 240 others. Israel in response launched a massive military operation aimed at eliminating Hamas and securing the release of the hostages.
According to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, at least 24,927 people have been killed in the IDF campaign, mostly women and children. These figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires.
The IDF says it has killed over 9,000 terror operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. That figure was somewhat corroborated by US intelligence agency assessments over the weekend, in a Wall Street Journal report that said the IDF has killed 20-30 percent of Hamas’s fighters in the Strip.
In 2021, a senior IDF commander said that Hamas was believed to have around 30,000 fighters — which puts the US assessments in line with IDF figures.
According to the report, the US believes the terror group still has enough munitions to continue fighting Israeli forces for a number of months.
The IDF has assessed that fighting in Gaza will likely last throughout all of 2024, as Israel works to strip Hamas of its military and governing capabilities. It has also vowed to continue fighting until all remaining hostages are released from captivity.
It is believed that 132 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November.
Four hostages were released prior to that, and one was rescued by troops. The bodies of eight hostages have also been recovered and three hostages were mistakenly killed by the military. The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 27 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.
One more person is listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.
Hamas is also holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin since 2014, as well as two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are both thought to be alive after entering the Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015 respectively.