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Palestinian armed factions have once again stepped up attacks on remaining Israeli troops in the central Gaza Strip and other parts of the besieged enclave.
On April 30, the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, released video footage of a rocket attack against gatherings and positions of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the so-called Netzarim Corridor, a 6.8 kilometers-long Israeli-occupied belt that stretches from the Be’eri area in southern Israel to Gaza’s coast and splits the Strip in half.
The group said that the attack was carried out in cooperation with the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
On the same day, the military wing of the Hamas Movement, which rules Gaza, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, shared footage showing an IDF bulldozer being targeted with an rocket-propelled grenade in the city of Beit Hanoun in the northern part of the Strip.
The group released two more videos on May 1 showing a mortar on Israeli troops and two military excavators in the Netzarim Corridor as well as a rocket attack on the settlement of Holit right to the east of southern Gaza.
The IDF maintains very little presence in Gaza outside the Netzarim Corridor. At least 263 Israeli troops have been killed since the start of ground operations in Gaza. Another 1,593 have been wounded in the operations so far.
On the Palestinian side, at least 34,596 have been killed since the start of the war, according to the latest update by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. More than 77,816 others have been wounded. Most of the victims were women and children.
In addition to the high number of casualties, the Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the Strip’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations.
The escalation in central Gaza comes amid reports of a slight progress in indirect talks between Israel and Hamas on a temporary ceasefire agreement. Despite the progress, the IDF is still preparing for an attack on the city of Rafah in the southern part of the Strip, where more than a million Palestinians have been taking refuge.
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