Unreported By IDF: 8 Soldiers Injured By IED In Northern Gaza

Eight IDF soldiers were wounded, three seriously, in northern Gaza on Friday – but the IDF chose not to disclose the incident, Kan News reported on Sunday morning.

The incident was in addition to the deadly incident in northern Gaza on Shabbos morning in which four soldiers were killed and six injured.

Soldiers from the Rotem Battalion of the Givati Brigade were operating in Jabalia and were injured as they entered a building, likely from the explosion of a device. According to the report, the condition of the three soldiers who were seriously injured has stabilized.

Over the past three months, the IDF intensified combat operations in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The operations have now shifted to Beit Hanoun in the northeastern part of the Strip, located opposite Kibbutz Erez, Kibbutz Nir Am, and Sderot.

According to the IDF, the current operations are being carried out slowly and more thoroughly than previous operations to allow Israelis to return to their homes in Erez and Nir Am and restore train operations in Sderot, which is currently exposed to enemy anti-tank missile fire.

Tragically, the IDF has paid a steep price in Beit Hanoun – 11 soldiers have been killed in the area in the past two months.

Ynet military commentator Yossi Yehoshua quoted a senior officer fighting in the northern Gaza Strip: “The method of raids from areas that the IDF has occupied is not working! The enemy is re-entering all the territory from which the IDF retreats and renewing attacks. The achievement is occupation and purification; the method must be occupation and holding onto the territory – not raids that end in withdrawal from the area.”

“This is exactly what happened in Beit Hanoun – it has long been ‘occupied’ but was not held by IDF forces, thus turning it into a refuge for many terrorists who understood that the IDF was unlikely to return there. When the IDF came back, it encountered an enemy that had re-fortified itself there, renewed its ranks and infrastructure, all with humanitarian aid that was continuously funneled into these areas.”