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The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced on February 28 that two officers were killed in the northern Gaza Strip a day earlier.
The two officers were identified as Major Iftah Shahar, a company commander in the Givati Brigade’s Tzabar Battalion and Captain Itai Seif, a platoon commander in the same unit. The IDF said that seven other soldiers from the Tzabar Battalion were seriously wounded in the same incident.
Shahar and Seif were killed and the seven other soldiers were seriously wounded as a result of an explosive device blast in a booby-trapped building in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood on February 28, according to the IDF.
The al-Quds Brigade, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said on the same day that its fighters blew up a building occupied by Israeli troops using an unexploding Israeli aerial bomb, in what it described as “a complex engineering operation”.
In the last three days, the Hamas Movement, the de-facto ruler of Gaza, and several other Palestinian armed factions in the Strip intensified operations against the IDF.
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, released footage of its fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades at a building occupied by Israeli troops and two armored personnel carriers in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. The footage also shows an attack with heavy explosive devices against IDF main battle tanks.
Meanwhile, the al-Quds Brigade released three videos. The first shows a sniper targeting an Israeli soldier in Khan Younis, the second a mortar attack against an IDF gathering in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza that was carried out in cooperation with the Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades and the last video shows a quadcopter that was recently shot down over Khan Younis.
The al-Mujahideen Brigades also released footage of an attack with an improvised rocket against an IDF armored bulldozer in the Zeitoun neighborhood.
Taking into account the last two casualties, the IDF has lost 242 troops since the start of ground operations in Gaza. More than 1,300 others have been reportedly wounded in the Strip, some of whom are still in a life-threatening condition.
On the Palestinian side, the death toll from the war is nearing 30,000, with women and children making the vast majority of the victimes.
Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas saw some advance in recent days, according to several reports. A ceasefire agreement could be soon announced. However, the shape of the agreement remains unclear. The Palestinian side insists on a permanent ceasefire, while Israel is still preparing for an offensive in the area of Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt, where more than one million Palestinians are taking refuge.
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