Illustrative image. (Israeli Defense Forces)
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged the death of a soldier in the Gaza Strip on June 3, the fourth to get killed in the Palestinian enclave in under 24 hours.
The slain soldier was reportedly serving in the ranks of the 6646th Battalion of the elite 646th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade.
According to an initial IDF probe, the soldier was killed when a Palestinian fighter armed with an assault rifle opened fire on the paratroopers who were operating in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood in the northern part of the Strip. Another soldier was wounded in the same firefight.
In a separate attack in the nearby town of Jabalia a drone dropped an munition on Israeli troops, according to the IDF, which said that two soldiers of the elite Yahalom combat engineering and an officer of the Shin Bet security agency were wounded.
Just a day earlier, three soldiers from the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion were killed when their vehicle was struck by an explosive device in Jabalia.
The last deaths brought the number of Israeli troops killed since the start of the large-scale offensive against Hamas in Gaza, codenamed “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” to six. In total, Israel has lost 425 soldiers, police officers and contractors during the fighting inside the Strip.
On the Palestinian side, the death toll from the war has already exceeded 54,500, with over 40 deaths reported on June 3 only.
Israel launched Operation Gideon’s Chariots last month after calling up tens of thousands of reservists. Currently, five divisions are operating in Gaza in the framework of the operation.
The IDF says that it wants to occupy 75 percent of Gaza within two months. Once this is done, more than two million Palestinians will be crammed in three isolated small zones in the southern, central and northern parts of the Strip. Where Israel will go from there is unclear.
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