A tank soldier was seriously wounded during fighting in southern Gaza on Wednesday, as Israeli security chiefs suggested the war was at a turning point and could intensify while talks on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal continued.
The IDF announced Thursday that the soldier, in the 188th Armored Brigade’s 71st Battalion, was taken to a hospital for treatment and his family was notified.
The incident occurred a day after four soldiers were injured in Gaza, three of them in the south’s Rafah and another in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where the IDF recently began ground operations.
Also on Thursday morning, the military said Hamas had launched a rocket at one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution sites in the southern Gaza Strip overnight. According to the IDF, the rocket was launched from Khan Younis toward the area of the GHF sites in Rafah. The projectile impacted some 250 meters from one of the aid sites, close to the army’s Morag Corridor.
The aid site opened for Palestinians to collect food packages Thursday despite the attack. The IDF said the rocket attack “adds to the attempts by the terror organizations, who operate cruelly and systematically, to sabotage the aid distribution sites program… while attempting to disrupt the distribution of humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip.”
The fighting is continuing as global criticism over reports of starvation in Gaza has mounted. Israel has rejected the claims and said it was making extensive efforts to let in aid.
Israel and Hamas, meanwhile, are in the midst of ongoing negotiations in Qatar over a ceasefire and hostage release deal. On Thursday morning, an Israeli source told The Times of Israel that Hamas’s latest response in the talks appeared “workable.”
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said Wednesday that the war stood at a “very significant juncture.” And Defense Minister Israel Katz said that if Hamas-held hostages were not returned to Israel soon, “the gates of hell will open.”
In a statement from his office, Katz said that the “Sinwar brothers” — late Hamas leaders Yahya and Mohammed — “ruined Gaza,” and that Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the terror group’s new leader in the Strip, “is turning it into a sea of ruins.”
“The heads of Hamas abroad are celebrating in palaces and luxury hotels and refusing to release the hostages,” Katz said. “If they won’t be freed soon, the gates of hell will open.”
On Wednesday, Zamir said that “we are at a very significant juncture that will impact the continuation of the campaign.”
“There has never been a war like this in the history of the IDF. We are operating in Tehran, Sanaa, Beirut, Syria, Jenin, and in the main center of gravity, the Gaza Strip,” he said, according to remarks provided by the IDF.
Hamas-linked health officials in Gaza said on Wednesday that more than 100 people had been killed in 24 hours by Israeli strikes or gunfire. The figures cannot be verified and do not differentiate between civilians and fighters. The IDF said it had struck over 100 terror targets in the Strip, including cells of operatives, booby-trapped buildings, tunnels, and other infrastructure.
Ten more Palestinians died of starvation, the health officials said, bringing the total number of people who have allegedly starved to death to 111, most of them in recent weeks as a wave of hunger has intensified in the Palestinian enclave.
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that 21 children under the age of five were among those who had died of malnutrition so far this year. Citing the Israeli ban on aid entering Gaza that was in place from March to May, it said the resumption of food deliveries was still far below what is needed.
Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said Thursday that 70 humanitarian aid trucks, primarily containing food, entered the Gaza Strip the previous day.
Some of the trucks entered southern Gaza via the Kerem Shalom Crossing, and others entered the northern part of the Strip through the Zikim Crossing. COGAT said the aid was delivered following thorough security inspections.
The announcement was made amid a groundswell of concern over hunger in the enclave. On Wednesday, more than 100 aid organizations and human rights groups warned that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza.
The Foreign Ministry rejected the statement, accusing the organizations of “serving the propaganda of Hamas, using their numbers, justifying their horrors.” The statement added that, “instead of challenging the terror organization, they embrace it as their own.”
Assistant United Nations Secretary-General Khaled Khiari told the UN Security Council that UNRWA, the agency that assists Palestinian refugees, will soon run out of money. Khiari said that current forecasts show insufficient funds to sustain operations beyond 2025.
Israel has accused the agency of working with Hamas and has provided evidence of several of its employees taking part in the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. Evidence and testimony from hostages indicate that they were at times held at UNRWA facilities.
Israel passed a law last year prohibiting the UN refugee agency from operating within Israel, though the legislation does not apply to the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
The war began with the Hamas-led October 7 attack, in which invaders killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 hostage. Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, at least 20 of whom are thought to be alive.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says nearly 60,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified. As of January, Israel said it had killed some 20,000 combatants in battle, and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel says 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. Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 456.