8 Israeli soldiers killed in ambush in southern Gaza Strip; deadliest day in months | News on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Hamas said it carried out “a complex ambush against enemy vehicles” in the Tal as-Sultan district, south of the city of Rafah.

Hamas militants killed eight Israeli soldiers traveling in military vehicles in Rafah after firing anti-tank grenades and then ambushing a support force stationed there.

Saturday’s attacks marked one of the deadliest days for Israeli soldiers in Gaza in months, as the ground invasion in the southern region escalates.

The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said in a statement that its soldiers had carried out “a complex ambush against enemy vehicles” in the Saudi neighborhood of Tal as-Sultan, west of the city of Rafah.

The armed group said it fired Yassin-105 rocket launchers at a D9 military bulldozer, killing and wounding an unknown number of Israeli soldiers. A “rescue force” vehicle that arrived later was also attacked, “leading to its destruction and the death of all its occupants.”

The Israeli army said in a statement that the eight soldiers were “killed in operations in the southern Gaza Strip,” without giving further details. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said an investigation would be launched to determine exactly how the attack took place.

“We are working to disarm all fighters to prevent Hamas from carrying out attacks on civilians again like on October 7. Today we were reminded again of the high price we are paying for this war, and we have soldiers who are ready to sacrifice their lives to defend Israel,” Hagari said in a televised statement.

At least 307 Israeli soldiers have been killed and thousands wounded since October 27, when the ground offensive in Gaza began. At least 37,296 Palestinians – mostly women, children and the elderly – have died since the war began on October 7, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

Saturday’s casualties are likely to fuel calls for a ceasefire and increase anger among the Israeli population. In January, 21 Israeli soldiers were killed in a single attack by Palestinian militants in central Gaza.

Attack on Rafah expands

Despite international condemnation and criticism, Israeli forces continue to enter Rafah and surround the city, where at least 19 Palestinians were killed on Saturday. Hundreds of thousands of desperate civilians without food, water and medicine remain trapped in the city.

Following the deadly Hamas ambush, air, sea and artillery attacks on the Tal as-Sultan area intensified.

Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said Saturday’s attack showed that Israel’s stated war aim of destroying Hamas had still not been achieved, even after eight months of fighting.

“The Palestinian resistance fighters have put up quite a fight,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to a recent news report quoting US intelligence officials as saying that around 70 percent of Hamas’ forces were still intact.

“What is even worse from the Israeli perspective is that Hamas has been able to recruit thousands of new members, so there is no personnel problem for Hamas.”

Gideon Levy, author and columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said the deaths of eight soldiers were a “high price for Israeli society.”

“More and more people in Israel are asking, what for and until when? This could become an endless war – a war of attrition in which Hamas forces, no matter how strong the Israeli army is, can always kill and sabotage, and then there will be direct retaliation. This leads nowhere. We will never achieve this ridiculous ‘total victory’ that Prime Minister Netanyahu talks about,” Levy told Al Jazeera.

Despite growing international pressure for a ceasefire, an agreement to stop the fighting still seems a long way off.

Since a week-long ceasefire in November that saw over 100 Israelis released, repeated attempts to agree a ceasefire have failed as Hamas insists on a permanent end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu refuses to end the invasion until Hamas is “wiped out.”

More than 100 prisoners are said to still be in Gaza, but many are presumed dead. The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Quds Brigades, said on Saturday that Israel could only win back its people if it ended the war and withdrew troops from the besieged enclave.