IDF Tanks, Troops Push Into Gaza Ahead of Ground Offensive
Military says it struck Hamas sites, operatives in hours-long "targeted raid" before returning infantry to Israeli side of border, as larger ground assault awaits.
The Israel Defense Forces deployed a limited ground incursion into Gaza overnight, sending infantry forces and tanks up to a kilometer into the northern part of the Strip, the military said Thursday morning.
The “targeted raid” appeared to be the most significant ground offensive into the Palestinian enclave since war broke out earlier this month, as the IDF prepares a full-scale invasion to eliminate the Hamas terror group that rules the Strip.
According to the IDF, the raid — led by the Givati infantry brigade and the 162nd Armored Division — was part of preparing the border area for the “next stages of the war,” referring to the full ground offensive promised by Israeli officials.
Troops struck “numerous” terrorists, infrastructure, and anti-tank guided missile launch positions, and “operated to prepare the battlefield,” the army said.
Soldiers returned to Israeli territory after the raid, the IDF added.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the operation lasted a few hours, and no soldiers were hurt. The troops operated within one kilometer of the border.
“Through the raid, we eliminated terrorists, neutralized threats, dismantled explosives, neutralized ambushes, in order to enable the next stages of the war for the ground forces,” Hagari said.
The incursion went beyond near-daily “localized raids” soldiers have been carrying out on areas near the border to search for bodies of missing Israelis and to clear the ground of explosives left behind by Hamas terrorists from the Oct. 7 onslaught.
Those raids are carried out with smaller numbers of forces and do not go as deep into the Gaza Strip as Thursday’s raid.
Israel says its war against Hamas is aimed at destroying the Iran-backed terror group’s infrastructure and has vowed to dismantle the organization after the Oct. 7 massacres, while minimizing harm to Gaza’s civilians.
Led by Hamas and carried out with other terror groups, the assault saw some 2,500 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air, and sea, killing some 1,400 people and seizing at least 228 hostages of all ages, under the cover of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.
The IDF has been calling on Palestinians to evacuate from northern Gaza southward, as it intensifies strikes in the Gaza City area ahead of the expected major ground incursion.
In the past day, Israeli jets struck over 250 sites belonging to Hamas, including infrastructure, command centers, tunnels, and rocket launchers, the army said.
Navy forces also struck a Hamas surface-to-air missile launch position that was situated next to a mosque and kindergarten, in Khan Younis, the army said.
Israeli Air Force sources have said that more than 10,000 sites belonging to Hamas and other terror groups have been struck since the beginning of the war.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says the strikes have killed 6,546 people, mostly civilians and many of them children. The figures issued by the terror group cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include its own terrorists and gunmen killed in Israel and in Gaza, and the victims of a blast at a Gaza City hospital on Oct. 17 caused by an Islamic Jihad missile misfire but which Hamas has blamed on Israel. Israel says it killed 1,500 Hamas terrorists inside Israel on and after Oct. 7.
The death toll on both sides is expected to rise significantly once Israel launches its ground offensive and begins entering cities. Troops are expected to have to contend with Gaza’s network of tunnels built by terror groups, booby traps and bombs, as they battle through tough urban environments.
Gazan terrorists have launched thousands of rockets at Israel since Oct. 7, killing and wounding a number of people. Rocket fire on areas near the Gaza Strip resumed Thursday morning after an overnight pause.
Much of the area has been evacuated of Israeli civilians, but is filled with thousands of troops mustering near the Gaza border who have been waiting for the order to enter.
Times of Israel staff and agencies contributed to this report.
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