Gaza: Israeli army announces the death of four soldiers

– Israeli army announces death of four soldiers

The army press release does not specify the circumstances of their deaths, but they bring the number of Israeli soldiers killed to 298.

Published today at 08:19

According to Israeli public broadcaster Kan, the four soldiers were killed in the explosion of a booby-trapped building in Rafah.

Israeli Army / AFP

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The Israeli army announced Tuesday the death of four of its soldiers, killed in fighting in the south of the Gaza Strip the day before, more than eight months after the start of the war against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

The soldiers, three conscripts aged 19 and 20 and a 24-year-old active commander, were “killed during fighting in the south of the Gaza Strip” on Monday, the army said in a statement, without giving details. details of the circumstances of their death.

According to Israeli public broadcaster Kan, the four soldiers were killed in the explosion of a booby-trapped building in Rafah, a town on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where the Israeli army is concentrating its efforts with the announced aim of destroy the last battalions of the armed wing of Hamas.

The latter had claimed the day before to have killed or injured an unknown number of Israeli soldiers by blowing up a booby-trapped building in the Chaboura Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah.

Military campaign in Gaza

The military correspondent of the daily Times of Israel reports that seven other soldiers were injured in this explosion, five of them seriously.

These deaths bring to 298 the number of Israeli soldiers killed in the military campaign on Gaza since the start of the ground offensive on October 7.

The war was sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 from the Gaza Strip. This led to the death of 1,194 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians killed on October 7, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures. Of the 251 people taken as hostages on October 7, 116 are still detained in Gaza, of whom 41 are dead according to the Israeli army.

In the Gaza Strip, more than 37,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed by Israeli bombings and military operations since the start of the war, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry for Gaza. .