Amid intense fighting in Gaza, Defense Minister Israel Katz said Friday that the Israel Defense Forces was making strides but paying a heavy price in the enclave, where a reservist was killed on Thursday and another was seriously wounded by RPG fire on Friday afternoon.
“The achievements are great, but still, the dangers are great and the prices are heavy,” wrote Katz on X.
His comments came as heavy strikes were reported in both the northern and southern Gaza Strip.
“Thousands of IDF soldiers in the standing army and reserves are now heroically fighting in Gaza for the release of hostages and to destroy Hamas terrorists,” said Katz, adding that the military was operating “intensely” to ensure ground troops were protected.
“All Israeli citizens must embrace and strengthen IDF commanders and soldiers and pray for their safety and success,” he said.
An hour after Katz’s statement, the IDF issued an evacuation warning to Palestinians in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City ahead of Israeli strikes on the area in the Strip’s north.
In a post on X, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee published a map of the area that is to be evacuated, saying the warning came in light of attacks by terror groups against Israeli forces in the area. Adraee urged the Palestinians to head for western Gaza City.
Mohammed al-Mughayyir, an official with Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense rescue agency, told AFP that the death toll from Israeli strikes on Friday had risen to at least 40.
WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said that an elderly Palestinian couple was killed Friday by Israeli artillery fire near Zeitoun, another Palestinian was killed in an airstrike on Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood and three were killed in an airstrike on a school housing displaced people in central Gaza City.
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