Three Israeli soldiers were killed and three were wounded while fighting Wednesday in the northern Gaza Strip, the military announced amid several days of deadly battles in the area.
The three slain troops were named as Staff Sgt. Matityahu Ya’akov Perel, 22, from Beit El, Staff Sgt. Kanaoo Kasa, 22, from Beit Shemesh, and Staff Sgt. Nevo Fisher, 20, from Bruchin.
They all served with the 401st Armored Brigade’s 46th Battalion.
In the same incident, three other soldiers were wounded, including an officer in serious condition.
According to an initial IDF probe, the troops were hit by a large explosive device that was detonated against a tank during operations in Beit Hanoun.
The incident came after three other troops were killed and several more wounded in separate incidents the previous two days, and brought Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in the Strip and in military operations along the border with the enclave to 401.
Troops of the Nahal Brigade operate in northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun, in a handout photo issued by the IDF on January 3, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)
During Wednesday’s combat in northern Gaza, the military said an Israeli Air Force attack helicopter carried out a strike against a group of Hamas operatives at a former school in Jabalia.
According to the IDF, the Hamas operatives were at a command center embedded within the Halawa School, and were using the complex to plan and carry out attacks against troops in Gaza and against Israel.
The building had also served as a shelter for displaced Gazans, according to Palestinian media.
Gaza’s Civil Defense reported at least nine people were killed in the strike.
The IDF said it took “numerous steps” to mitigate civilian harm, including by using aerial surveillance and other intelligence.
Meanwhile, a rocket launched from southern Gaza at the Kerem Shalom area was successfully intercepted by air defenses.
The IDF later launched an interceptor missile near the border with Gaza, though the military said it was found to have been fired at a “false” identification.
There were no reports of injuries.
In the past two weeks, more than 20 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israel, mostly from the Strip’s north.
This picture taken from southern Israel shows trails of smoke from Palestinian rocket fire as well as smoke from Israeli strikes rising above destroyed buildings in the northern Gaza Strip, on January 8, 2025. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP)
Also Wednesday, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby shot down claims of genocide in Gaza, when pressed on why the US formally recognized genocide in Sudan while not doing so in the coastal territory.
“The IDF isn’t waking up every day and putting their boots on the floor, saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to go kill some innocent people because they happen to be Palestinian,’” Kirby said during a press briefing.
“That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been too many civilian casualties in this conflict… and we have been nothing but direct with our Israeli counterparts about our concerns on that and about trying to get them… to be more discriminate about the civilian toll in Gaza. It’s unacceptably high… but that is not the same as saying genocide,” he argued.
The White House spokesperson said slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his terror organization have been the ones with “genocidal intentions,” as demonstrated during their October 2023 onslaught in which they slaughtered some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
The subsequent war in Gaza has killed around 46,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose unverified figures do not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The IDF said it had killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7, 2023.
Jacob Magid and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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