RAFAH, Gaza Strip—Palestinian terrorists ambushed Israeli troops in a dense Gaza City neighborhood, killing at least nine of them, media reported Wednesday, as Hamas put up stiff resistance in areas that Israel has isolated and pounded with airstrikes for over nine weeks.
The air and ground offensive has resulted in the deaths of over 18,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that triggered the war. Nearly 85 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been forced to flee their homes, and much of the territory’s north resembles a moonscape.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly called on Israel to take greater measures to spare Palestinian civilians.
More than six weeks after Israeli soldiers invaded Gaza’s north, ground troops are still locked in heavy combat with Palestinian fighters in and around Gaza City. Clashes raged overnight and into Wednesday in multiple areas, with especially heavy fighting in Shijaiyah, a dense neighborhood that was the scene of a major battle during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas.
Army Radio said troops who were searching a cluster of buildings in Shijaiyah on Tuesday lost communication with four soldiers who had come under fire, sparking fears of a possible abduction. When the other soldiers launched a rescue operation, they were ambushed with heavy gunfire and explosives.
Among the nine dead were Col. Itzhak Ben Basat, 44, the most senior officer to have been killed in the ground operation, and Lt. Col. Tomer Grinberg, a battalion commander.
The military confirmed the deaths but did not respond to a request for further comment. Several Israeli media outlets carried similar accounts of the battle.
Heavy rainfall overnight swamped tent camps in Gaza’s south, where Israel has told people to seek refuge.
Israeli strikes overnight hit two residential buildings in the southern province of Khan Younis, where Israeli ground forces had launched a new line of attack earlier this month.
President Biden said Tuesday that he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” and that Mr. Netanyahu should change his government, which is allegedly dominated by hard-right parties.
But the offensive is being conducted by a war Cabinet that includes two politically centrist retired generals and has overwhelming support among Israelis from across the political spectrum.
In Israel, attention is still focused on the atrocities carried out on Oct. 7, when over 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and some 240 people were taken hostage, around half of whom remain in captivity.
Over 18,400 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
The U.S. hopes to revive the peace process, which ground to a halt more than a decade ago. It wants the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority (PA), which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to also govern Gaza, which Hamas seized from it in 2007.
But President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the PA, is extremely unpopular, and he has ruled out any return to Gaza outside of a solution to the conflict that creates a Palestinian state.
By Najib Jobain, Samy Magdy, and Melanie Lidman