Another Israeli soldier killed in battles in northern Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestine

The Israeli army on Wednesday announced that another of its soldiers was killed in fighting with Palestinian groups in the northern Gaza Strip.

The slain soldier was part of the Combat Engineering Corps’ elite Yahalom unit, according to Army Radio.

As many as 175 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israeli ground operation on Oct. 27.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, killing at least 22,185 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 57,035 others, according to local health authorities.

Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas offensive.

The attacks have left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicines.

Senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an Israeli drone strike on southern Beirut on Tuesday.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar