JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said three soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Gaza on Wednesday, as it pressed ahead with its offensive in Rafah.
Three more soldiers were badly wounded in the same incident, the military said, though it provided no further details. Israel’s public broadcaster Kan radio said they were injured by an explosive device set off in a building in Rafah.
Defying an order from the International Court of Justice, Israeli forces have kept up their offensive in Rafah, where they aim to root out the last major intact formations of Hamas fighters and rescue hostages.
International unease over Israel’s three-week-old Rafah offensive has turned to outrage since an airstrike on Sunday set off a blaze in a tent camp in a western district of the city, killing at least 45 people.
Israel said it had been targeting two senior Hamas operatives and had not intended to cause civilian casualties. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “something unfortunately went tragically wrong.”
The Israeli military said it was investigating the possibility that munitions stored near a compound targeted by Sunday’s airstrike may have ignited.
Israel told around one million Palestinian civilians displaced by the almost eight-month-old war to evacuate from Rafah before launching its incursion in early May. Around that many have fled the city since then, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
On Tuesday, the United States, Israel’s closest ally, reiterated its opposition to a major Israeli ground offensive in Rafah but said it did not believe such an operation was under way.
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Three Israeli soldiers killed in combat in southern Gaza, military says
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Three Israeli soldiers killed in combat in southern Gaza, military says
- Israeli forces have kept up their offensive in Rafah, defying an order from the International Court of Justice
Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah says commander killed in strike
BAGHDAD: The Tehran-backed Iraqi group Kataeb Hezbollah said on Thursday that one of its commanders was killed in a strike in southern Iraq the previous day.
Ahmad Al-Hamidawi, the secretary-general of the armed faction, mourned in a statement the loss of a “great commander,” Ali Hussein Al-Freiji, who had joined the group more than two decades ago.
Two sources from the faction told AFP on Wednesday that a strike hit a vehicle near the group’s main base in southern Iraq, killing two fighters.
The toll then rose to three, including the commander.
One source described the attack as a “Zionist-US strike.”
The group’s Jurf Al-Nasr base was the first Iraqi target of strikes blamed on Israel and the US, which later expanded to other areas.
Since the start of the war, the strikes have killed 15 fighters, mostly from Kataeb Hezbollah.
Iraq, which has recently regained a sense of stability but has long been a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, had said it did not want to be dragged into the war. But it has not been spared.
Several Iran-backed armed groups — known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, to which Kataeb Hezbollah also belongs — claim daily drone attacks on US bases.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq on Thursday warned European countries not to join the war, threatening their “forces and bases in Iraq and the region.”
Earlier on Thursday, the Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported that security forces seized two rockets and a launchpad in the southern Basra province, that were set up to target a neighboring country.
Ahmad Al-Hamidawi, the secretary-general of the armed faction, mourned in a statement the loss of a “great commander,” Ali Hussein Al-Freiji, who had joined the group more than two decades ago.
Two sources from the faction told AFP on Wednesday that a strike hit a vehicle near the group’s main base in southern Iraq, killing two fighters.
The toll then rose to three, including the commander.
One source described the attack as a “Zionist-US strike.”
The group’s Jurf Al-Nasr base was the first Iraqi target of strikes blamed on Israel and the US, which later expanded to other areas.
Since the start of the war, the strikes have killed 15 fighters, mostly from Kataeb Hezbollah.
Iraq, which has recently regained a sense of stability but has long been a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, had said it did not want to be dragged into the war. But it has not been spared.
Several Iran-backed armed groups — known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, to which Kataeb Hezbollah also belongs — claim daily drone attacks on US bases.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq on Thursday warned European countries not to join the war, threatening their “forces and bases in Iraq and the region.”
Earlier on Thursday, the Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported that security forces seized two rockets and a launchpad in the southern Basra province, that were set up to target a neighboring country.
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