This image grab taken from AFPTV video footage shows Palestinians looking for survivors in a crater following a strike in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 31, 2023. The IDF said the airstrike was part of ‘a wide-scale strike’ on Hamas operatives and infrastructure belonging to the terror group’s Central Jabaliya Battalion.
Sgt. Roei Wolf and Staff Sgt. Lavi Lipshitz, both 20, die in battle; Jabaliya blasts level buildings; IDF says it hit terror tunnels, which collapsed and brought down nearby blocks.
Israeli troops fight ‘fierce battles’ against Hamas in urban areas deep inside Gaza.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed fighting in the northern part of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as the Israel Defense Forces announced a major operation in Jabaliya in which a top Hamas commander and dozens of terror operatives were killed.
The operation involved airstrikes and ground forces taking control of a compound that the IDF said was used by Hamas’s Central Jabaliya Battalion. Several buildings in the Jabaliya area collapsed; the IDF said they were brought down when Hamas terror tunnels beneath them collapsed following airstrikes targeting the head of the battalion and terror infrastructure.
Some 50 terrorists were killed during ground operations on Tuesday, according to the IDF.
The two soldiers were named Tuesday as Staff Sgt. Roei Wolf, 20, from Ramat Gan, and Staff Sgt. Lavi Lipshitz, 20, from Modiin, who both served in the Givati Infantry Brigade’s reconnaissance unit.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Tuesday evening that the two soldiers died “bravely in battle” as troops worked to capture a Hamas stronghold in Jabaliya.
“This is complex close-quarters combat. In the fierce battles that took place today, we lost troops,” he said.
Hagari said troops were fighting terrorists heroically and courageously. “This is a dangerous conflict. It has a price,” he said. “It is complex, but it is essential to our capacity to achieve the aims of the war.”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday evening that the IDF was making “significant” achievements during the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, but that it was also “paying a heavy price.”
“We are deploying forces on a large scale, deep in the Strip,” Gallant told troops of the Air Force’s elite Shaldag and 669 units. “There are battles against the forces that are operating [in Gaza] and the results and achievements on the battlefield are very high.”
“Unfortunately, in war, there are also prices, and the prices in the last day were heavy prices,” Gallant continued. “Despite that, we are also determined to continue and win.”
On Tuesday afternoon, huge blasts hit the Jabaliya residential area on the outskirts of Gaza City, in what the IDF later confirmed was a targeted attack on a Hamas commander and infrastructure belonging to the terror group’s Central Jabaliya Battalion.
Eyewitnesses and reporters said that the blasts in the northern part of the Gaza Strip — which Israel has urged civilians to exit — claimed a large number of lives. Palestinians said they occurred in the Jabaliya refugee camp, which is adjacent to the city of the same name.
The IDF said shortly afterward that it had killed the commander of Hamas’s Central Jabaliya Battalion, Ibrahim Biari, in an airstrike that was part of “a wide-scale strike” on Hamas operatives and infrastructure belonging to the Central Jabaliya Battalion.
The military said the strikes that killed Biari and several other terrorists caused underground terror tunnels to collapse, bringing down several nearby buildings.
Hamas claimed multiple Israeli airstrikes had leveled several apartment blocks and the Hamas-run health ministry said 50 people were killed, a claim which could not be independently verified. Hamas has been accused of artificially inflating the death toll of civilians killed in the Strip, in particular of those killed in an October 17 blast at the al-Ahli hospital, which Hamas blamed on Israel but which was caused by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch.
According to the IDF, the Central Jabaliya Battalion had taken control of several civilian buildings in the area, and many of those killed in the strikes were Hamas operatives.
“The strike damaged Hamas’s command and control in the area, as well as its ability to direct military activity against IDF soldiers operating throughout the Gaza Strip,” the army said in a statement. It said that “numerous” terrorists were killed along with Biari, and “underground terror infrastructure embedded beneath the buildings, used by the terrorists, also collapsed after the strike.”
According to the IDF, Biari was one of the Hamas commanders responsible for directing members of the terror group’s elite Nukhba forces to invade Israel on October 7, where over 1,400 people were massacred, most of them civilians. The IDF also reiterated its call to the residents of the area “to move south for their safety.”
Footage of the scene from Al Jazeera TV showed at least four large craters where buildings once stood, amid a large swath of rubble surrounded by partially collapsed structures. Dozens of rescue workers and bystanders were seen digging through the wreckage, searching for survivors beneath the pancaked buildings. A group of young men pulled two children from the upper floors of a damaged apartment block, cradling them as they climbed down.
Wails filled the dusty air as volunteers clawed through the concrete blocks and twisted metal, with AFP video footage showing at least 47 corpses being recovered.
In a separate statement, relating to the same area of conflict, the IDF said that its ground troops had taken control of a Hamas “military stronghold” in western Jabaliya amid fierce fighting between ground troops and terror group operatives.
The IDF said infantry forces and tanks, led by the Givati Brigade, seized the compound. It included tunnels and rocket launching positions, as well as weapon storage sites, the IDF said.
The IDF said troops clashed with Hamas in the compound, killing “numerous” terrorists, and the Air Force struck sites and other operatives in the area. After capturing the site, troops located and later destroyed the entrances to tunnels as well as weapons.
It added that intelligence information was also obtained from the compound.
