IDF says nine of its soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday
The Israel Defense Forces said nine of its soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip on Monday, one of the deadliest says for Israeli forces since the start of the ground operation in the enclave.
Six of the nine were killed in Central Gaza, and three in Southern Gaza, bringing the IDF's death toll since the beginning of the operation in the enclave to 185.
Israeli army says dozens more soldiers injured in Gaza fighting
Another 27 Israeli soldiers have been wounded during battles in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, the military said. Figures released by the army showed that 519 soldiers had been killed and 2,465 others injured since the outbreak of the war on Gaza.
The military released the names and other information of five soldiers who died. They all belonged to a combat engineering team. A sixth soldier was “seriously wounded” during fighting in central Gaza.
Earlier, the army released the names and photos of four other troops. Two were killed by a rocket-propelled grenade in southern Khan Younis, another was shot dead by Hamas fighters, and the fourth died in an explosion.
Hamas fighters destroy Israeli tank south of Khan Younis
The al-Qassam Brigades says its fighters destroyed an Israeli Merkava tank with an Al-Yassin 105 shell, south of the city of Khan Younis. Merkava tanks are classified as among the most fortified in the world and the most powerful on the battlefield.
East of the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, fighters from the al-Qassam Brigades killed four Israeli soldiers with a locally manufactured rifle called “Ghoul”.
Israel has failed to achieve its goals: Hamas leader
Head of Hamas’s political bureau Ismail Haniyeh is now speaking at the International Union of Muslim Scholars in Doha, Qatar. He said Israel has three main objectives in its ongoing war on Gaza: eliminating Palestinian resistance, recovering captives held in the enclave, and displacing Palestinians in Gaza from their homeland.
Haniyeh said that despite the high price of the war, “the enemy has failed to achieve any of its goals in the war”.
Hamas is using North Korean weapons in war against Israel, South Korea says
Palestinian militant group Hamas is using North Korean weapons in its war against Israel, according to South Korea’s spy agency.
In a response to CNN Tuesday, South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed an earlier report by the US government-funded Voice of America that Hamas fighters used a North Korean-made F-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher. NIS said it is "collecting and accumulating concrete evidence regarding the scale and timing of North Korea’s provision of weapons to Hamas".
North Korea is a major illicit exporter of small arms and light weapons despite United Nations sanctions aimed at choking off its exports, according to analysts.The VOA report is not the first to link North Korean weaponry to Hamas. Last October, a senior official with the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said it had evidence of Pyongyang exporting RPGs and potentially other weapons either directly or indirectly to the Islamist militant group.
North Korea’s cooperation with Hamas also likely extends to tactical doctrine and training, the South Korean official said at the time.
South Korea’s claims about Hamas using North Korean weapons come after the United States claimed last week that Russia is using North Korean-made missiles to attack Ukraine.
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