A snapshot from a video recently published by the Al-Qassam Brigades showing the targeting of an Israeli force in Gaza (social networking sites)
Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), announced on Friday that it had killed Israeli soldiers and destroyed tanks, at a time when battles were raging in several areas in the Gaza Strip.
In statements published on the Telegram application, the Al-Qassam Brigades said that its fighters sniped two Israeli soldiers with a Ghoul rifle east of the city of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.
It added that it destroyed 3 Israeli Merkava tanks with strobe charges east of the city of Khan Yunis as well.
In the same area, Al-Qassam fighters targeted another Merkava tank with two soldiers next to it with an Al-Yassin 105 shell, destroying it and killing them, according to what was stated in one of the statements.
The Al-Qassam Brigades announced yesterday, Thursday, that they had killed and wounded about 40 Israeli soldiers and destroyed 10 vehicles, including two troop carriers and tanks, in the fighting fronts of Khan Yunis, Gaza City, and eastern Jabalia.
Yesterday, the military wing of the Hamas movement broadcast pictures that it said were of its fighters clashing with the occupation army and its vehicles in the Al-Tuffah and Al-Daraj neighborhoods in Gaza City.
In turn, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, broadcast images of its fighters targeting Israeli military crowds east of Bureij.
Fierce battles
Meanwhile, battles rage between the Palestinian resistance and the occupation forces in Khan Yunis and neighborhoods in Gaza City, as well as in the vicinity of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.
The Al-Qassam Brigades said that its fighters clashed with the occupation forces last night and this morning in several areas in the Gaza Strip, including Jabalia in the north, during the night and Friday morning.
For its part, the Al-Quds Brigades said that its fighters engaged in clashes with Israeli forces in the Bureij and Al-Maghazi camps in central Gaza and in Khan Yunis in the south.
Fighting resumed at a high pace in the northern Gaza Strip after the Israeli army recently claimed that it had undermined the combat capabilities of the Hamas movement there.
The Israeli army announced that 19 soldiers were injured in the Gaza battles during the past 24 hours.
An Israeli rescue unit accompanies a soldier who was injured in Gaza in preparation for transporting him on a helicopter out of the Strip (French)
The Israeli army had previously announced that a soldier from the Givati Brigade was killed as a result of wounds he sustained two days ago, and three others were seriously injured in battles in the southern Gaza Strip.
This brings the number of Israeli soldiers and officers killed since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the ensuing Israeli war on Gaza to 530, including 201 since the beginning of the ground war on the twenty-sixth of last October.
For his part, Israeli Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy said that the army is demobilizing some of its reserve forces due to the existing state of tension between the battlefield and the requirements of normal life, indicating that they will be called up again.
Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the Israeli army had destroyed 16 or 17 of the 24 Hamas combat battalions in Gaza, but he said that “purging” the Strip of the movement’s militants would require many more months.
Source: Al Jazeera + agencies