An IDF tank commander was seriously wounded during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday as the military pushed ahead with its widened offensive in the enclave.
Gaza’s health authorities said the ongoing campaign had killed more than 50 people over the past day.
The military said that the injured tank commander, who serves in the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd Battalion, was evacuated from the Strip to a hospital, and his family was notified.
In a separate incident on Thursday, a soldier was lightly wounded when a grenade exploded during operations in southern Gaza.
Late last week, the military launched its new offensive dubbed Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which Israel says seeks to destroy remaining Hamas capabilities and seize and retain Gaza territory while relocating Palestinians across the enclave.
The military announced on Thursday that the IDF’s elite 98th Division had returned to operating in the Gaza Strip, bringing the number of divisions acting in the enclave to five. The elite formation of paratrooper and commando units — made up of thousands of soldiers — is operating in Khan Younis, the military said, and is working to establish “operational control” and destroy Hamas’s infrastructure in the southern Gaza city, both above and below ground.
The army said that troops of the division had already killed dozens of terror operatives, including in close-quarters combat and through directing airstrikes. Some 200 sites used by terror groups had been demolished, including tunnels, the army added.
At the same time as the IDF operated across large parts of southern Gaza, it issued an evacuation warning for Palestinians in 14 different locations in the enclave’s north.
Among the areas included in the evacuation zone were Sheikh Zayed, Salatin, Beit Lahiya, and Jabaliya.
In a post on X, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, warned that the military was operating “with great force” in these areas and that they were considered “dangerous combat zones.”
A map posted alongside the warning showed a swath of territory marked in red.
The army had issued a similar evacuation call for northern Gaza late Wednesday following rocket fire on southern Israel.
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million have been displaced at least once during the war.
Hundreds of people have been reported dead across the Strip since the start of the new Israeli offensive, and on Thursday evening, the Hamas-run civil defense agency said that 52 people had been killed in the past day, and dozens more had been injured. The figures, which do not differentiate between civilians and gunmen, could not be verified.
Israel says it only targets terror groups and makes efforts to minimize harm to civilians.
AFP footage of northern Gaza showed numerous plumes of smoke rising from the area over the course of the afternoon.
Earlier on Thursday, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said a tank shell hit a medicine warehouse inside Al-Awda Hospital in Beit Lahiya, on the northern edge of the enclave, and set it ablaze.
Videos taken by a health official at Al-Awda showed walls blown away and thick black smoke billowing over wreckage.
While rescue workers were trying to extinguish the fire, medics said tanks had been stationed outside the hospital, effectively blocking access to it.
Hospital director Mohamed Salha said that the civil defense agency had spent three hours trying to contain the fires and failed.
Highlighting the dire status of Gaza’s medical services, the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent said it may be forced to shut down its Gaza operations within days in the absence of fresh supplies, as its ambulance fleet was running at only a third of capacity due to fuel shortages.
While flour and other aid began reaching some of Gaza’s most vulnerable areas on Thursday after Israel let some trucks through, nowhere near enough has entered to make up for shortages caused by an 11-week Israeli blockade, Palestinian officials have said.
Asked how long his organization could continue operating in Gaza, Palestine Red Crescent Society President Younis Al-Khatib told reporters in Geneva: “It’s a matter of time. It could be days.
“We are running out of fuel. The capacity of ambulances we work with now is one third,” he said, adding its gasoline-powered ambulances had already halted, but some were running on solar power provided by the United Nations.
The war in Gaza erupted with the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
More than 53,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the ensuing war or are presumed dead in the war, according to unverified numbers from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.