By Nidal al-Mughrabi and James Mackenzie
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed 45 Palestinian fighters in Gaza over the past day, the military said on Tuesday, after heavy fighting in which militant group Hamas said it destroyed two armoured personnel carriers during an ambush near the city of Rafah.
The Israeli military said the Hamas official in charge of smuggling operations was among those killed and that his death significantly hit their ability to bring weapons and military equipment into the besieged enclave.
On Tuesday, air strikes killed five Palestinians in the Al-Bureij camp, in the central Gaza Strip, medics said, while two others were killed in a separate air strike in Rafah, near the southern Gaza border with Egypt.
Hamas does not provide casualty numbers for its fighters.
The Islamist movement’s armed wing said its fighters destroyed the two Israeli troop carriers in an ambush east of Rafah, where heavy fighting has been reported for weeks. There was no confirmation from the Israeli military.
With Israel braced for a possible attack in the north by Iran and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, it faces a multi-front threat, 10 months after the start of the war in Gaza.
The territory’s health ministry said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded 66 others in the past 24 hours.
“Many victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, where the teams of the ambulance and civil emergency service can’t reach,” the ministry said in a statement.
In the larger Palestinian territory, the West Bank, Israeli forces also killed at least eight people on Tuesday and overnight.
TANK SHELLING
Hamas-led fighters set off the Gaza war last year, when they rampaged through Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip, in a surprise attack, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and seizing some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies, in the most deadly single day attack on Israel in its history.
In response, Israel has conducted a relentless assault on Gaza that has reduced much of the heavily populated coastal strip to ruins and killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.
The figure does not distinguish between fighters and civilians but Israeli authorities estimate their forces have killed or incapacitated some 14,000 fighters, around half the total Hamas force estimated at the start of the war.
Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced multiple times since the start of the war and the fighting has brought misery to thousands trapped in overcrowded tent shelters.
Residents said Israeli tank shelling continued overnight in Bureij, Al-Maghazi, Nuseirat, and Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of displaced families from all over the enclave have sought temporary refuge.
Residents and Hamas media said tanks made a brief advance earlier on Tuesday in Al-Zahra City northwest of Nuseirat.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and James Mackenzie in Jerusalem; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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