Israel suffers deadliest single incident in war against Hamas, with 21 soldiers killed
21 died when buildings collapsed after grenade attack Monday, Israel says, while 3 died elsewhere
Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip, the military said on Tuesday, the biggest Israeli death toll in a single day of the war against Hamas, as Israel pressed on with its biggest ground assault so far in 2024.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said 21 soldiers were killed in an explosion when two buildings they had mined for demolition collapsed after militants fired grenades at a nearby tank.
Earlier, the military said three soldiers were killed in a separate attack in southern Gaza.
"Yesterday we experienced one of our most difficult days since the war erupted," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. "In the name of our heroes, for the sake of our lives, we will not stop fighting until absolute victory."
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the war would determine Israel's future "for decades to come."
"The fall of the fighters is a requirement to achieve the goals of the war," Gallant said.
The deaths came as Israeli forces mount their biggest ground campaign of the new year, pushing deep into the western part of Khan Younis, the main city in the south of the Palestinian enclave, near areas sheltering hundreds of thousands of people who fled other parts of the enclave.
"Over the past day, [Israeli Defence Forces] troops carried out an extensive operation during which they encircled Khan Younis and deepened the operation in the area. The area is a significant stronghold of Hamas's Khan Younis Brigade," the military said.
"Ground troops engaged in close-quarters combat, directed [air force] strikes, and used intelligence to co-ordinate fire, resulting in the elimination of dozens of terrorists."
21 IDF soldiers were killed in action yesterday (Monday) as they continued to operate against Hamas centers of gravity in southern Gaza.<br><br>Based on the information available at this stage, the troops were operating in eastern Gaza near Khan Younis. The forces were operating to…
—@IDFHospital burials in Gaza
Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that rules Gaza and that several Western countries consider a terrorist organization that advocates for the destruction of the state of Israel. Around 1,200 people, including several Canadians, were killed during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas-led militants, according to Israeli authorities. Around 250 were taken hostage.
During a weeklong truce in late November, dozens of those hostages were exchanged for Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons, but the fate of around 130 hostages who remain in Gaza is unclear.
U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk is in Cairo on Tuesday for "active" discussions on ensuring the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and securing another humanitarian pause, White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday.
At least 195 Palestinians were killed in the space of 24 hours, raising the documented toll to 25,490, according to Palestinian health officials, who say thousands more dead are feared lost in the rubble.
Nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have lost their homes, the vast majority now penned into small towns just north and south of Khan Younis, many sleeping rough in makeshift tents with food and medicine running out and no clean water.
Israeli tanks, advancing west across the crowded city, shut the last road out toward the coast on Tuesday, blocking the escape route for civilians trying to flee southwest toward the Egyptian border, residents said by phone.
"I am trying to leave for Rafah, but the tanks are now very near to the coast and are firing toward the west," said Shaban, 45, an electrical engineer with four children. He said he still hoped to evacuate his family to the north.
Gaza officials say Israeli blockades and storming of hospitals since Monday left the wounded and dead beyond the reach of rescuers as fighting escalated in the crowded city.
The dead were being buried inside the grounds of Khan Younis's main Nasser hospital because it was unsafe to leave to reach the cemetery. Another Khan Younis hospital, Al-Khair, was stormed by Israeli troops who arrested staff there, and a third, Al-Amal, where Red Crescent rescuers are based, was cut off and unreachable, according to Palestinian officials.
Israel says Hamas fighters operate in and around hospitals, making them legitimate targets. Hospital staff and Hamas deny this.
Discontent in Israel grows
Since last week, Netanyahu has vowed never to let Palestinians have an independent state, a break with Israel's main ally Washington, which has considered a peace process ultimately leading to a Palestinian state as the bedrock of its Middle East policy for decades.
Relatives of hostages still held in Gaza have called for more effort to bring them home, even if that means reining in the military campaign. A group of them burst into a parliamentary committee hearing on Monday.
Last week, a member of Netanyahu's war cabinet, former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, whose own soldier son was killed in Gaza, said the campaign had yet to achieve its aims of dismantling Hamas and there was no hope of freeing the hostages in a military operation.
He called for swift elections to replace a government he said had lost public confidence.
The conflict has been accompanied by an escalation in violence elsewhere in the Middle East, especially where armed groups allied to Israel's arch foe Iran operate, including Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
The Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which controls most of the populated parts of Yemen, has attacked shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is support for Gaza. The United States and Britain, which have been striking the Houthis this month, carried out another round of air strikes overnight.