An Israeli soldier was killed and another 12 were wounded on Wednesday during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip, bringing the toll of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas since late October to 247.
The soldier was named as Staff Sgt. David Sasson, 21, of the Oketz canine unit, from Ganot Hadar. Among the 12 wounded in the same battle against Hamas operatives, five sustained serious injuries, according to the Israeli military.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, another soldier of the Commando Brigade was seriously wounded during fighting in southern Gaza.
In central Gaza, the IDF and Shin Bet announced the commander of Hamas’s rocket unit in the area was eliminated in an airstrike on Wednesday.
Amar Atiya Darwish Aladini was responsible for Hamas’s rocket fire from the so-called central camps over the past several decades, at least from the 2008 war, a joint statement said. The IDF and Shin Bet said Aladini “played a central role in the preparations” for the terror group’s October 7 onslaught, and directed rocket fire on Israeli cities and IDF troops in Gaza in the shock attack.
The IDF says it also carried out strikes on several Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya over the past day Wednesday, in response to earlier rocket fire on Sderot. The targets included hideout apartments where terror operatives were gathered and weapons were stored, other weapon depots, rocket launchers, and tunnels, the military said.
A number of Hamas officers and terrorists who participated in the October 7 massacre were also killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, the IDF said Wednesday without specifying the locations of the attacks. These include two platoon commanders and a squad commander in Hamas’s elite Nukhba force, according to the announcement, and two terrorists who participated in the massacre in Nir Yitzhak on October 7.
In southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, the IDF said troops captured hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives during an ongoing raid on the Hamad Town residential complex. The IDF says the high-rise towers in the neighborhood are used by Hamas.
So far, the IDF said some 250 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives have been captured, some of whom participated in the October 7 assault and are members of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force.
The IDF said the interrogations of the operatives provide helpful information for its continued operations in Gaza.
The IDF said the Commando Brigade’s Maglan and Egoz units, along with the Navy’s Shayetet 13 and Shin Bet agents, have been carrying out building-to-building searches in Hamad.
The commandos captured “many” operatives who surrendered to them in the neighborhood, including a Hamas sniper squad commander and two other commanders, the IDF said
Troops also seized firearms, explosives, and military equipment, including scuba gear, in the buildings, according to the military.
At the same time, the IDF said the 7th Armored Brigade is encircling the Hamad area, and with the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504, are capturing terror operatives trying to flee with evacuating civilians.
Elsewhere in Khan Younis, the IDF said the Bislamach Brigade ambushed and killed a five-person Hamas cell.
In the northern Gazan city of Beit Hanoun, the IDF said earlier Wednesday that a fighter jet struck a building where two Hamas operatives were seen fleeing, and publishedfootage of the attack.
The army said Nahal Brigade soldiers in central Gaza killed some 20 Hamas gunmen over the past day, including with sniper fire and by calling in airstrikes.
One airstrike was carried out against a site from which operatives fired rockets at troops inside Gaza. The IDF said secondary explosions after the strike indicated that additional rockets were stored there.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said Wednesday that the death toll in the Gaza Strip has climbed to 30,717 since October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists launched a murderous rampage across southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages. Hamas’s figures cannot be verified, do not differentiate between combatants and civilians, and include some 13,000 Hamas terrorists Israel says it has killed in battle since October.
Israel also says it killed some 1,000 gunmen inside Israel on October 7.