The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday announced the death of a soldier killed during fighting in the southern Gazook city of Khan Younis the day before, the latest loss for an infantry brigade rotated into Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
late last week.
The death of Sgt. Maj. (res.) Dennis Yekimov, 33, Yekimov’s death brought the number of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas
...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...to 246, as fierce fighting continued to rage in several parts of the Strip, even as the army said it had ended a two-week operation to re-clear a previously captured Gaza City neighborhood.
Yekimov, from Beersheba, was part of the Bislamach Brigade, which lost three soldiers in Khan Younis on Saturday when they entered a booby-trapped building in the city. Another 14 soldiers were maimed, six of them seriously, in the blast.
The Bislamach Brigade — the IDF’s School for Infantry Corps Professions and Squad Commanders in wartime — entered Gaza on Thursday to replace the Paratroopers Brigade, which was withdrawn after three straight months of fighting in Khan Younis.
Fighting in the Strip has shown little sign of slowing despite claims of gains in the southern Gaza city, and intense international efforts for a temporary ceasefire before Israel’s ground offensive expands to the southern city of Rafah.
In central Gaza, the IDF and Shin Bet said an
...
KABOOM!...
Sunday morning took out Mahmoud Muhammad Abed Khad, who had led Hamas recruitment efforts, specifically to the terror group’s Zeitoun Battalion. The IDF and Shin Bet said Khad was also involved in raising funds for Hamas military activity.
The IDF published video it said showed the strike on Khad as he traveled in a vehicle.
Paleostinians in central Gaza said a truck hit by a drone had been carrying aid, a claim denied by the Israeli military, though it was unclear if it was the same strike that killed Khad.
"It was hit by a drone with one missile," turning several people "into pieces," said Haytham al-Quraan, as he examined the remains. "They were delivering aid to the south. Then it was hit again by a second missile."
The Paleostinian Red Islamic Thingy said crews "transferred five deaders" and four injured "due to targeting a truck by an Israeli drone."
Contacted about the incident, the military told AFP: "It was not an aid truck that was struck," but did not elaborate.
Further north, the IDF said it had wrapped up a two-week-long raid in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, after troops were redeployed to the area to prevent bully boyz from retaking control of the area the IDF had said it had conquered earlier in the war. The army said at least 113 "terror operatives" were killed in the operation, during which troops destroyed some 35 Hamas and Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
targets, including weapon depots and manufacturing sites, tunnel infrastructure, rocket launching sites with hundreds of launchers, and a site belonging to the commander of the Gaza City Brigade, Izz ad-Din Haddad, according to the IDF.
It was unclear if the sites had been re-established or left intact by the IDF following its first sweep of the area months earlier.
Dozens more terror suspects were captured, the army said, accusing Hamas button men of hiding among the civilian population in Zeitoun. Hamas button men are operating in Zeitoun without a "military framework," and in relatively small cells, according to the IDF, after the military said it dismantled the terror group’s battalions in the area in the early stages of the ground offensive.
Four soldiers were killed over the course of the operation, as troops were targeted with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and bombs amid the operations. According to the IDF, most of the attacks on troops in Zeitoun occurred during the day, rather than at night.
Airstrikes continued to pound areas of southern Gaza, with an AFP correspondent reporting several air strikes in southern Gaza’s Rafah and Khan Younis late Sunday.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday that the corpse count in the war had surpassed 30,400 people, with an additional 71,700 people having been injured. The terror group’s figures are unverified, don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, and list all the fatalities as caused by Israel — even those believed to have been caused by hundreds of misfired rockets or otherwise by Paleostinian fire.
Speaking to troops of the 98th Division on the Gaza border, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed Israel will not end the war in the Gaza Strip until Hamas is completely dismantled.
"We will not end this war without eliminating Hamas. There will be no such situation. There will be no Hamas as a ruling organization. It will take the time it takes," he said.
At least 16 children have died of malnutrition in recent days as "famine spreads" in Gaza’s north, said a front man for the Hamas-run health ministry. The UN has said it is becoming more difficult to distribute aid inside Gaza. The flow of aid from Egypt has almost dried up in the past two weeks, and a collapse in security has made it increasingly difficult to distribute the food that does get through, according to UN data and officials.
Israel, which checks all trucks entering Gaza from both the Kerem Shalom and Rafah crossings, has blamed the United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
for not delivering the aid fast enough after they are cleared, and for leading to a general fall-off in deliveries over the past month.
Officials are also seeking ways to deliver aid to northern Gaza, after a convoy that entered the area early Thursday was embroiled in a chaotic melee in which dozens of Paleostinians died and hundreds more were maimed, with Hamas accusing Israel of opening fire on hungry Gazooks.