Hamas fighters killed eight Israeli soldiers traveling in military vehicles in Rafah after firing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and then ambushing a support force deployed there.
Saturday's attacks marked one of the deadliest days for Israeli soldiers in Gaza in months as it continues to ramp up its ground invasion of the southern region.
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said in a statement that its soldiers “carried out a complex ambush against enemy vehicles” in the Saudi neighborhood of the Tal as-Sultan district of the western city of Rafah.
The armed group said it fired Yassin-105 RPG missiles at a D9 military bulldozer, killing and wounding an unidentified number of Israeli soldiers. A “rescue” vehicle that arrived later was also attacked, “causing its destruction and the death of all its occupants.”
The Israeli military said in a statement that the eight soldiers “fell during an operational activity in southern Gaza,” without giving further details. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said an investigation will be launched into how exactly the attack occurred.
“We are working to disarm all fighters to prevent Hamas from attacking civilians like on October 7 again. Today we receive another reminder of the high price we are paying because of this war, and we have soldiers willing to sacrifice their forces. lives to defend Israel,” Hagari said in a televised statement.
At least 307 Israeli soldiers have been killed and thousands wounded since October 27, when the ground invasion of Gaza was launched. At least 37,296 Palestinians – mostly women, children and the elderly – have died since the war began on October 7, Gaza's Health Ministry says.
Saturday's casualties will likely fuel calls for a ceasefire and increase Israeli public anger. In January, 21 Israeli soldiers were killed in a single attack by Palestinian fighters in central Gaza.
Rafah assault expands
Despite international condemnation and censure, Israeli forces continue to advance and surround Rafah, where at least 19 Palestinians were killed on Saturday. Hundreds of thousands of desperate civilians, without food, water or medicine, remain trapped in the city.
Air, sea and artillery attacks against the Tal as-Sultan area intensified following the deadly Hamas ambush.
Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, said Saturday's attack shows that Israel's stated war goal of destroying Hamas remains elusive after eight months of fighting.
“Palestinian resistance fighters have put up a great fight,” he told Al Jazeera, highlighting a recent news report quoting US intelligence officials as saying that around 70 percent of Hamas' fighting force remains intact.
“What's even worse, from an Israeli perspective, is that Hamas has been able to recruit thousands of new members, so there are no manpower problems for Hamas.”
Gideon Levy, an author and columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said the death of eight soldiers is a “heavy price for Israeli society.”
“More and more people in Israel are asking themselves, why and for how long? This could become an endless war, a war of attrition in which, no matter how strong Israel's army is, Hamas forces can always kill and sabotage, and then there will be direct retaliation. It doesn't lead anywhere. “We will never achieve this ridiculous ‘total victory’ that Prime Minister Netanyahu talks about,” Levy told Al Jazeera.
Despite growing international pressure for a ceasefire, an agreement to stop the fighting still seems distant.
Since a week-long truce in November that freed more than 100 Israelis, repeated attempts to arrange a ceasefire have failed, with Hamas insisting on a permanent end to the war and Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu refuses to end the invasion before Hamas is “eradicated.”
More than 100 captives are believed to remain in Gaza, although many are believed to be dead. The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Quds Brigades, said on Saturday that Israel could only get its people back if it ends the war and withdraws troops from the besieged enclave.
