The Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement on Telegram that it "targeted an Israeli Merkava tank with a Yassin 105 missile in the Al-Jafrawi Chalets area, southeast of Deir al-Balah."
It confirmed that its fighters had spotted an Israeli helicopter landing at the site, but the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the operation.
Earlier, the Qassam Brigades reported that it had targeted an Israeli armored personnel carrier with a Yassin 105 missile near the Abu Holi junction east of Deir al-Balah, an area where the Israeli army recently announced a ground operation and asked residents to evacuate their homes.
The Israeli occupation army has intensified its artillery shelling and airstrikes on the southern areas of Deir al-Balah over the past two days, following evacuation warnings issued for the first time in the area since the start of the war of extermination on October 7, 2023.
The resistance is carrying out operations against the occupation army along various fronts of its incursion into the Gaza Strip, as part of its response to the Israeli aggression and the ongoing war of extermination that has been ongoing for 22 months. This war has resulted in killing, starvation, destruction, and displacement, while ignoring all international calls and orders from the International Court of Justice to halt it.
Earlier on Tuesday, eyewitnesses reported what they described as violent clashes between fighters from Palestinian factions and Israeli forces advancing south of Deir al-Balah.
The Israeli occupation army announced earlier that a reserve officer was killed in a battle in the southern Gaza Strip, making him the second soldier killed within 24 hours.
According to data from the occupation army, the number of its dead since the start of the genocide on October 7, 2023, has risen to 895 soldiers, including 451 in the ground battles in the Gaza Strip that began on the 27th of the same month.
The same data also indicates that 6,108 soldiers have been wounded since October 7, including 2,803 in ground combat in the Gaza Strip. Tel Aviv strictly controls the publication of its losses in Gaza and is secretive about the actual death toll, suggesting that the reported numbers are likely to rise.
The genocidal war on Gaza, which Israel has been waging with American support since October 7, 2023, has left more than 201,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 9,000 missing, in addition to hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, and a famine that has claimed the lives of many.
