The occupation also acknowledged on Wednesday that 16 soldiers were injured in the attack, which involved the use of a powerful explosive device targeting a Puma engineering vehicle, completely destroying it and its occupants. Evacuating the soldiers was impossible due to the intensity of the fighting and the difficulty of reaching the site.
For its part, Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that identifying the dead soldiers took a long time due to the bodies being badly charred, and that the army was forced to transport the vehicle and its occupants into Israel because evacuation aircraft were unable to complete the mission on the ground.
The newspaper also reported that the perpetrators of the ambush have not yet been found, while Palestinian factions targeted rescue forces attempting to reach the scene.
Israeli media reported that search operations for missing soldiers in the area continued, with intensive air force flights attempting to evacuate the wounded and locate the missing soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced that it had carried out a complex ambush targeting an Israeli force inside a house south of Khan Yunis. The ambush involved two Yassin 105 rockets and an RPG, killing and wounding a number of soldiers. A Merkava tank was also targeted in the same area.
In a related development, the Al-Quds Brigades announced that it had shelled gatherings of Israeli soldiers with mortar shells north of Khan Yunis and detonated a highly explosive device that destroyed a military vehicle.
Since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, 871 Israeli officers and soldiers have been killed, including 428 since the start of the ground operation on October 27.
A total of 6,000 officers and soldiers have been wounded since the beginning of the war, including 2,738 in ground combat in the Gaza Strip, according to official army data.
These operations come as part of the Palestinian factions' response to the genocide perpetrated by Israel in the Gaza Strip, with US support, since October 7, 2023. This genocide includes killing, starvation, destruction, and displacement, ignoring international calls and orders from the International Court of Justice to halt it.
The genocide left approximately 188,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing. Hundreds of thousands were displaced, and famine claimed the lives of many, including children.
Israel has been besieging Gaza for 18 years, leaving approximately 1.5 million Palestinians out of a population of approximately 2.4 million in the Strip homeless after their homes were destroyed in the war of extermination.
