Palestinian fighters say they are “causing deaths and injuries” in attacks with anti-tank rockets and small arms.
Palestinian fighters clashed with Israeli forces in fierce battles in the Shujayea neighborhood of northern Gaza City, a day after tanks and troops arrived and forced tens of thousands of terrified civilians to flee.
In a statement on Friday, the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said they blew up a booby-trapped residential building in Shujayea, killing four Israeli soldiers and wounding five others.
The improvised explosive device used was an unexploded F-16 missile recovered intact after being fired from an Israeli fighter jet, he said.
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said its fighters also continue to engage in “violent clashes” while “causing deaths and injuries” in anti-tank rocket attacks and small arms fire.
A day earlier, Israeli forces carried out intense air and artillery strikes and sent armored vehicles into war-torn northern Gaza in a new assault after withdrawing in January saying Hamas had been “dismantled” in the area.
Palestinian civilians are leaving on foot, carrying their few belongings, through rubble-strewn streets in the intense summer heat. Israel has displaced at least 60,000 people from Gaza City since Thursday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday.
There was no official confirmation of the deaths of the Shujayea soldiers on Friday, but the Israeli military reported that one soldier was killed and nine wounded in clashes across Gaza over the past 24 hours.
Fighting continues in Rafah
Ground operations, backed by airstrikes, are continuing in northern Gaza, killing “dozens” of fighters, the military said Friday. The intense fighting came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that the “intense phase” of the war was coming to an end.
Soldiers “began conducting targeted raids” in Shujayea when intelligence services indicated “the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area,” the military said, in its first details of the operation.
At least 668 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, 2023, including more than 300 since the ground invasion of Gaza began. Another 3,953 have been injured.
Israel claims to have killed some 15,000 Palestinian fighters during the nearly nine-month conflict.
Israel lost eight soldiers in a single attack earlier this month in southern Rafah when Hamas fighters ambushed and blew up a military vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade.
Palestinian health officials said tank shelling in Rafah on Friday killed at least 11 people. Displaced Palestinian families fled what they said was intensifying Israeli fire to seek shelter further north, describing chaotic scenes as the fighting approached.
One resident said some bulldozers in the Shakoush area piled up sand for Israeli tanks to park behind.
“The situation there is very dangerous and many families are leaving towards Khan Younis, even from the Mawasi area, as things have become unsafe for them,” the unnamed man told Reuters news agency.
The UN's Dujarric said the raids on al-Mawasi, which the Israeli army declared an “evacuation zone”, had caused many casualties and displaced at least 5,000 people.
Most of Gaza’s population has been uprooted and much of the territory’s infrastructure has been destroyed, forcing residents to struggle to survive. A UN-backed assessment this week said nearly 500,000 people in Gaza are suffering from “catastrophic” hunger.
