By James Mackenzie and Nidal al-Mughrabi
JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) – Eight Israeli soldiers were killed in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, the military said, as forces continued to advance in and around the southern city of Rafah and attacks hit several areas of Gaza, killing at least 19 Palestinians. .
The soldiers, all members of a combat engineering unit, were on an armored personnel carrier that was hit by an explosion that detonated engineering materials carried in the vehicle, apparently in contravention of standard practice, the military said. It said the morning incident, in the Tel al-Sultan area of western Rafah, was being investigated.
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas said the vehicle became trapped in a prepared minefield that triggered the explosion.
Israeli tanks advanced on Tel al-Sultan and the projectiles hit the coastal area, where thousands of Palestinians, many of them already displaced several times, sought refuge.
Despite growing international pressure for a ceasefire, an agreement to stop the fighting still appears distant, more than eight months since the war began in October, with almost daily cross-border firefights with Hezbollah militia fighters in southern Iraq. Lebanon to intensify. .
In Israeli air strikes on two houses in the suburbs of Gaza City, residents said at least 15 people were killed. Four other people were killed in separate attacks in the south, doctors said.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that its forces in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city near the border with Egypt, had captured large quantities of weapons, both above ground and hidden in the extensive network of tunnels built by Hamas.
He said militants on Friday fired five rockets from the humanitarian area in central Gaza, two of which landed in open areas in Israel and three of which failed in Gaza.
“This is yet another example of the cynical exploitation of humanitarian infrastructure and the civilian population as human shields by terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip for their terrorist attacks,” the military said.
PROTESTS
The deaths of the eight soldiers, bringing the total number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza to more than 300, could complicate the political situation facing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a week after centrist former general Benny Gantz left the government, accusing Netanyahu of not having an adequate strategy for Gaza.
Protests by families of hostages still held by Hamas, demanding a deal to bring them home, have become weekly events, highlighting divisions in Israeli society that have reopened after a period of unity at the start of the war.
Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, Al-Quds Brigades, said on Saturday that Israel could only recover its hostages in Gaza if it ended the war and withdrew its forces from the enclave.
Islamic Jihad is a minor ally of Hamas, which led a violent attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli records. More than 100 hostages are believed to remain captive in Gaza, although at least 40 were declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Since the week-long truce in November, repeated attempts to achieve a ceasefire have failed, with Hamas insisting on a permanent end to the war and Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu refuses to end the war before Hamas is eradicated.
At least 37,296 Palestinians, at least 30 of them in the last 24 hours, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign to eliminate Hamas, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by David Holmes and Ros Russell)
