5 Israeli soldiers killed by friendly fire in northern Gaza

MAJORITY OF BATTLEFIELD DEATHS 

TANKS ROLL OVER INFANTRY

Mithil Aggarwal
Updated Thu, May 16, 2024 


The Israeli military said Thursday that five soldiers were killed and seven others were injured in a friendly fire incident in northern Gaza amid renewed battles in the area against regrouped Hamas militants.

The Israel Defense Forces said it had opened an investigation into the deadly incident, which it said happened when the soldiers were hit by tank crossfire in Jabalia.

While battles raged in the north, Israel's defense minister said more troops would join the ground operation in Rafah, where an intensifying assault has sent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the southern Gaza city where they had sought refuge.


"An initial investigation into the deaths of five IDF soldiers reveals that IDF tanks, located dozens of meters away, identified a weapon and fired shells at an IDF force nearby," the IDF said in a statement.

"This force had entered the northern part of Gaza and occupied buildings along a logistic route. The tanks fired two shells for unclear reasons, resulting in seven more soldiers being injured, three severely."

The statement added that the IDF "is probing why the shells were fired and if the soldiers were mistaken for armed militants." The troops were members of the 202nd Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade.

Seven months into its war aimed at eliminating Hamas, Israeli forces are again engaged in intense fighting in areas of northern Gaza that the IDF said earlier had been cleared, renewing doubts over the government's strategy in the war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under growing pressure from the U.S. to lay out a plan for postwar Gaza, and on Wednesday he faced rare public criticism over the issue from within his own War Cabinet.

In a nationally televised statement, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant challenged Netanyahu over what he said was his refusal to discuss the issue. He said that would lead to Israel’s being forced to rule over the Palestinian enclave again, which he said he opposed. "We must make tough decisions for the future of our country, favoring national priorities above all other possible considerations, even with the possibility of personal or political costs," Gallant said.

Still, Netanyahu insists the focus must be on invading Rafah, where his troops have intensified operations since Israel called on residents of the city's east to evacuate last week.

After he conducted an assessment Wednesday on the Gaza border near Rafah, Gallant said that “additional troops will join the ground operation in Rafah."

“This operation will continue as additional forces will enter" the area, he said, according to a transcript his office provided a day later. "Several tunnels in the area have been destroyed by our troops and additional tunnels will be destroyed soon. This activity will intensify.”

At least 600,000 people fled parts of Gaza's southernmost city, where more than 1 million Palestinians sought shelter, according to the United Nations, with 100,000 more people displaced in northern Gaza.

The U.N.’s top court opens two days of hearings Thursday into South Africa's call to halt Israeli operations in Rafah.

The slow increase in the flow of aid into the strip over recent months could also be wiped out by Israel's assault on Rafah, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday, with one critical aid crossing shut and another restricted.

U.S. Central Command said early Thursday it had successfully anchored a temporary humanitarian pier to a beach in Gaza to increase the flow of aid.

“Trucks carrying humanitarian assistance are expected to begin moving ashore in the coming days,” it said in a post on X.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

5 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza by their own army's tank fire

Haley Ott
Updated Thu, May 16, 2024

5 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza by their own army's tank fir


The Israel Defense Forces said five of its soldiers, all between 20 and 22 years old, were killed by Israeli tank fire in northern Gaza on Wednesday evening. An initial internal investigation found that two tanks fired at a building in the Jabalia refugee camp where the soldiers had gathered. The building was being used by the deputy commander of the battalion, according to an IDF statement.

"It appears that the tank fighters, from the ultra-Orthodox paratrooper company 'Hatz,' identified a barrel of a weapon coming out of one of the windows in the building, and directed each other to shoot at the building," the IDF statement said.

"This is a very difficult incident, the work environment is under very complex operational stress and in a very crowded area," IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Thursday. "We are in the middle of the investigation, we will learn the lessons. Maintaining the security of our forces is a central task."

The incident came as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, after a situational assessment at the Gaza border in Rafah, said more Israeli troops would be entering Gaza.

"Several tunnels in the area have been destroyed by our troops and additional tunnels will be destroyed soon," Gallant said Wednesday. "This activity will intensify – Hamas is not an organization that can reorganize, it does not have reserve troops, it has no supply stocks and no ability to treat the terrorists that we target. The result is that we are wearing Hamas down."

Israeli defense chief calls for "day after" plan in Gaza

As IDF operations continued, Gallant publicly challenged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week about his post-war plans for the Gaza Strip.

In addition to military action, Gallant said in a televised statement that "the establishment of a governing alternative in Gaza" in the wake of almost 20 years of Hamas rule was also crucial to Israel's stated objective of dismantling the group. "In the absence of such an alternative, only two negative options remain: Hamas' rule in Gaza or Israeli military rule in Gaza."

Gallant said he would oppose the latter scenario and urged Netanyahu to formally rule it out.

Israel plans to "destroy Hamas." If that happens, who will lead the Palestinians in Gaza?

He said he had been trying to promote a plan to create a "non-hostile Palestinian governing alternative" to Hamas since October, but that he'd received no response from the Israeli cabinet.

Gallant has previously suggested the Palestinian Authority (PA), which administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, could have a role in governing Gaza after the war. Netanyahu has dismissed that suggestion, also floated by the United States, as have various members of the PA.

On Tuesday, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari was asked if the lack of a post-war strategy for Gaza was hindering military operations there.

"There is no doubt that an alternative to Hamas would generate pressure on Hamas, but that's a question for the government echelon," he said.