An Israeli soldier was killed and three others were wounded during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, the military announced.

The Israel Defense Forces said the name of the soldier, who served as a tank driver in the 14th Reserve Armored Brigade’s 79th Battalion, would be released for publication later. His family was notified.

In the same incident, a reservist in the 79th Battalion and an officer in the elite Yahalom combat engineering were seriously wounded. Another reservist, in the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade’s 8239th Battalion, was moderately hurt.

According to an initial IDF probe, the slain soldier was hit by sniper fire in the Beit Hanoun area, close to one of the military’s posts in the Israeli-held buffer zone.

The other troops were hit by anti-tank fire, according to the initial investigation.

The cell behind the attack apparently managed to flee.

The deadly incident took place not far from an attack on Saturday, in which Hamas operatives opened fire on an unarmored army vehicle, seriously wounding three soldiers, before planting a bomb in the area, which killed a soldier and seriously injured another.

That soldier, Warrant Officer G’haleb Sliman Alnasasra, was the first soldier to be killed since the IDF resumed its offensive against Hamas in Gaza lsat month.

Hours before announcing the death of the tank driver on Thursday, the IDF issued an evacuation warning to Palestinians residing in Beit Hanoun and the Sheikh Zayed neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip.

In a post on X, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee published a map of the area that was to be evacuated, saying the warning came in light of sniper attacks on troops and other activity by terror groups in the area.

Palestinians were called upon to head for Gaza City.

Also Thursday, the IDF and Shin Bet said an airstrike in northern Gaza’s Jabalia a short while ago targeted a group of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives at a command center used by the terror groups.

Palestinian media reported that the strike targeted Jabalia’s former police station, and that at least nine people were killed.

According to the IDF, the site was used by the terror operatives to plan and carry out attacks on Israeli civilians and troops.

The IDF said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm in the strike, including the use of a “precision munition, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”

“The terror organizations systematically violate international law while taking over civilian infrastructure, and while brutally exploiting the civilian population as a human shield for its terror attacks,” the military added.

Meanwhile, video from the center of Gaza City showed an injured child among rubble, reportedly following an Israeli airstrike.

Osama Abu Rabee, a journalist in Gaza, published footage showing a wounded and bleeding child among the rubble of a building.

The body of a man can be seen behind the child, who is calling for help.

Abu Rabee also claimed that there were additional bodies of children on the scene of the strike.

According to reports from Gaza, the building was hit by an Israeli airstrike.

The Saudi Al-Arabiya channel reported that seven people were killed in the strike.

The IDF said it was looking into the incident.

The war began with the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion that killed over 1,200 people and saw the kidnapping of 251 hostages back to Gaza. Fifty-nine of the 251 taken as hostages remain in captivity, of whom 24 are believed to still be alive.

According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, more than 51,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel assesses it has killed about 20,000 combatants in Gaza as of January, as well as some 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 412. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and two Defense Ministry civilian contractors.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.