Israel says 24 soldiers killed in deadliest day of ground war in Gaza

JERUSALEM - Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip on Jan 22, the biggest single-day toll suffered by Israel since the

start of its ground operation on Oct 27

.

Twenty-one soldiers were killed when a tank was hit by grenades, causing two buildings they had mined for demolition to collapse, Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, said in a televised statement on Jan 23.

The buildings, which were identified as “terrorist infrastructure”, collapsed as a result of this explosion, “while most of the force was inside and near it”, he said, adding that those killed were reservists.

A medical evacuation team was deployed, but it was a “complicated operation which took place until the last hours”, he added, indicating the difficulty in extracting bodies buried under the rubble.

“The dedicated reservists, who stood up for the flag, sacrificed what was dearest to them for the security of the state of Israel so that we can all live here in complete safety,” he said.

The Israeli military said earlier three soldiers were killed in a separate attack in southern Gaza.

“Yesterday, we experienced one of our most difficult days since the war erupted,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “In the name of our heroes, for the sake of our lives, we will not stop fighting until absolute victory.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the war would determine Israel’s future “for decades to come”.

“The fall of the fighters is a requirement to achieve the goals of the war,” he said.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog released a statement on what he said was an “unbearably difficult morning”.

“On behalf of the entire nation, I console the families and pray for the healing of the wounded. Even on this sad and difficult morning, we are strong and remember that together, we will win,” he said.

Celebrations, necessary sacrifice

Palestinians celebrated the Israeli losses as a victory, while Israelis spoke of them as a necessary sacrifice in a war against Hamas.

“The resistance said it is going to make Gaza a graveyard for the occupation and this is what is happening,” said Mr Abu Khaled, sheltering in a school in Deir al-Balah, one of the few areas yet to be stormed by Israeli forces.

“The more they stay, the more we will suffer for sure – but the more they will suffer too.”

Ms Blina Rhodes, an Israeli woman on the street in Jerusalem, said: “You know, it’s our sons, it’s our brothers. It’s terrible, but we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do so that Oct 7 doesn’t happen again. You have to get rid of Hamas and make Gaza safe for us. Otherwise, we have no place to live.”

Mr Sami Abu Zuhri, head of the political office of Hamas in exile, said the Israeli losses were proof that the armed wing of Hamas was getting stronger and “the American and Israeli goal to get rid of Hamas or weaken it is not possible”.

“We call on the American administration to stop this pointless policy and stop betting on the possibility of weakening or finishing Hamas,” he said by phone from an undisclosed location.

“Instead, the American administration must recognise the rights of the Palestinian people in freedom.”

Hospital under siege

The deaths came as Israeli forces mounted their biggest ground campaign of the new year, pushing deep into the western part of Khan Younis, the main city in the south of Gaza, near areas sheltering hundreds of thousands of people who fled other parts of the enclave.

Gazans say Israeli blockades and storming of hospitals since Jan 22 have left the wounded and dead beyond the reach of rescuers as fighting escalated in Khan Younis.

At least 195 Palestinians were killed in the previous 24 hours, raising the documented toll to 25,490, according to Palestinian health officials, who say thousands more dead are feared lost in the rubble.

The dead were being buried within the grounds of Khan Younis’ main Nasser hospital because it was unsafe to leave for the cemetery.

Another Khan Younis hospital, Al-Khair,

was stormed by Israeli troops

who arrested staff there, and a third, Al-Amal, where Red Crescent rescuers are based, was cut off and unreachable, according to Palestinian officials.

Israel says Hamas fighters operate in and around hospitals, making them legitimate targets. Hospital staff and Hamas deny this.

Israel began a sweeping offensive against Hamas in Gaza after the group

attacked southern Israel on Oct 7

.

That attack resulted in the deaths of around 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Israel’s blistering retaliatory offensive against Hamas in Gaza has killed 25,295 people, most of them women, children and adolescents, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run territory.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have lost their homes, with the vast majority now penned into small towns just north and south of Khan Younis, many sleeping in makeshift tents with food and medicine running out and no clean water.

Netanyahu under fire

The large death toll of Israeli troops in fighting comes at a time when Israel itself is beginning to see the first stirrings of discontent with Mr Netanyahu’s war strategy – committed to the total annihilation of Hamas, but with only vague discussion of what would come next for Gaza.

Since last week, Mr Netanyahu has vowed

never to let Palestinians have an independent state

, a break with Israel’s main ally Washington, which has considered a peace process ultimately leading to a Palestinian state as the bedrock of its Middle East policy for decades.

Relatives of hostages still held in Gaza have called for more effort to bring them home, even if that means reining in the military campaign. A group of them burst into a parliamentary committee hearing on Jan 23.

Last week, a member of Mr Netanyahu’s war Cabinet, former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, whose own soldier son

was killed in the ground offensive in Gaza

, said the campaign has yet to achieve its aims of dismantling Hamas and there is no hope of freeing the hostages in a military operation.

He called for swift elections to replace a government that he said had lost public confidence.

The conflict has been accompanied by an escalation in violence elsewhere in the Middle East, especially where armed groups allied with Israel’s arch foe Iran operate, including Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

The Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which controls most of the populated parts of Yemen, has attacked shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is support for Gaza.

The United States and Britain, which had been striking the Houthis in January, carried out another round of air strikes overnight. AFP, REUTERS