Israel military has been fighting with Hamas in Rafah since its ground assault on May 7

Jerusalem:

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that four soldiers had been killed in fighting in southern Gaza the previous day, more than eight months into its war against Hamas. The soldiers were “killed in fighting in south Gaza” on Monday, the military said in a statement, without elaborating on the circumstances of their deaths.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan said that the soldiers were killed in an explosion in a building in Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah.

On Monday evening, Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said its fighters had “booby-trapped” a building in the Shabura refugee camp in Rafah.

“The Qassam mujahideen were able to detonate a booby-trapped house inside which a Zionist force was holed up … leaving members of the (Israeli) force dead and wounded,” the group said in a statement.

The Times of Israel reported that seven soldiers were also wounded in the blast, five of them seriously.

The latest deaths took to 298 the military’s overall losses since its ground offensive in Gaza began on October 27, it said.

The military has been locked in street fighting with Hamas in Rafah since launching its controversial ground assault on the city on May 7.

Foreign governments, including US ally Israel, had opposed the operation, out of concern for the safety of Palestinian civilians sheltering in the city. Well over a million have since fled, seeking refuge where they can.

The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 37,124 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

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