A 19-year-old Defense Ministry civilian contractor was killed by an explosive device Thursday during IDF operations in the northern Gaza Strip, the military said, as Hamas’s civil defense agency reported 44 people killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave.
The contractor was named as David Libi, from the West Bank settlement outpost of Malachei Shalom. He had been operating heavy engineering machinery in the area of Jabalia when he was hit by a bomb apparently planted there by terror operatives, according to a military probe.
Libi is the third Defense Ministry contractor to be killed in Gaza since the start of the war, and his death brought Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas and in military operations along the border with the Strip to 421. The figure also includes two police officers.
Three IDF soldiers were also lightly wounded Thursday by RPG fire at a southern Gaza building from they had been operating, the military said. According to the IDF, the gunmen behind the attack were eliminated a short while later, and the wounded troops were taken to a hospital.
Also Thursday, the IDF said it had struck dozens of targets in Gaza, and that troops had recently destroyed a large Hamas tunnel in the Strip’s south. In the Strip’s center, the IDF issued evacuation orders for residents of the Nuseirat, where troops reportedly cleared out a hospital by force, and a wide evacuation order was also later ordered for parts of northern Gaza.
Meanwhile, a US- and Israel-backed humanitarian aid agency meant to circumvent Hamas opened its third distribution site in Gaza on Thursday. The agency also pushed back on what it said were Hamas claims of death and injury in the first two sites, which opened in Rafah this week.
The fighting in Gaza continued as Hamas said it was still studying a ceasefire-hostage deal proposal that the US forwarded the terror group after Israel approved the offer. Terror groups still hold 58 Israeli hostages in Gaza, including at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Smoke billows from the Gaza Strip amid Israeli airstrikes, as seen from the Israeli side of the border with the Palestinian territory, May 29, 2025. (Jack Guez / AFP)
IDF strikes across Strip; Hamas says at least 44 killed
The Israeli Air Force has struck dozens of targets in Gaza over the past day, including terror operatives, buildings used by terror groups, observation and sniper posts, tunnels and other infrastructure, the military said Thursday.
The strikes came as five IDF divisions operate in the Strip amid Israel’s renewed offensive there, which aims to occupy 75 percent of the enclave within two months.
Over the past day, ground forces have killed several operatives and destroyed weapons and other terror infrastructure, including tunnels, the IDF said Thursday.
The military also said a Hamas attack tunnel in southern Gaza had been demolished during recent operations of the Gaza Division and the Yahalom commando unit of the Combat Engineering Corps.
The tunnel was hundreds of meters long and had several exits, some of them rigged with explosives, the army said.
During the efforts to uncover and demolish the tunnel, troops killed operatives they had spotted emerging from one of the shafts, according to the military.
Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency said Israeli attacks killed at least 44 people on Thursday, including 23 people in an attack on a home in central Gaza’s Al-Bureij refugee camp.
According to Hamas’s health ministry, more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Strip since the terror group stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
The Hamas death tolls cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.
The IDF has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and and accuses Hamas of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
On Thursday, the IDF issued an unusual warning to Palestinians in the Nuseirat area of central Gaza, telling them to stay away from several locations where the military said Hamas operatives were present. The announcement named six prominent operatives.
“Stay away from Hamas operatives hiding among you and expel them before it’s too late!” wrote Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman.
Nuseirat’s Al-Awda Hospital, which is not in the evacuation zone delineated by the IDF, nonetheless said Israeli troops had carried out “a forced evacuation of patients and medical staff” from its premises.
There was no immediate comment from the IDF on the hospital’s statement.
#عاجل تحذير إلى سكان قطاع غزة في منطقة النصيرات – ابتعدوا عن عناصر حماس المختبئون بينكم واطردوهم قبل فوات الأوان!
الصورة المرفقة تُظهر طريقة عمل عناصر حماس الإرهابية في منطقتكم حيث يستخدمون البنى التحتية المدنية لديكم ويتموضعون في محيطكم.
تستغل حماس البنى التحتية المدنية… pic.twitter.com/LMFyEs5Lr3— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) May 29, 2025
Late Thursday night, the IDF issued a new wide evacuation warning for Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip, calling on Palestinians residing in Atatra, Jabalia, and the Gaza City neighborhoods of Shejaiya, Daraj, and Zeitoun to head west.
“The IDF will expand its offensive activity in the areas where you are located to destroy the capabilities of the terror organizations,” the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Adraee said on X, adding that the areas marked on the map were “considered dangerous combat zones.”
#عاجل الى جميع سكان قطاع غزة المتواجدين في مناطق العطاطرة، جباليا البلد، الشجاعية، الدرج والزيتون
تواصل المنظمات الإرهابية نشاطها التخريبي في المنطقة ولذلك سوف يوسّع جيش الدفاع نشاطه الهجومي في مناطق وجودكم لتدمير قدرات المنظمات الإرهابية
????من هذه اللحظة، سيتم اعتبار المناطق… pic.twitter.com/EGwZk13nnZ— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) May 29, 2025
US, Israel-backed aid agency opens third distribution site
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed firm that aims to sideline Hamas in the distribution of aid, said Thursday that it had opened up a third aid distribution site, located in the central Gaza’s Bureij, adjacent to the IDF’s Netzarim corridor.
An additional site in Rafah is slated to open in the coming days, according to the agency, which has faced criticism due to the lack of access for tens of thousands of residents still located in north Gaza. The agency also said it plans to open additional sites, including in the northern Strip, in the coming weeks.
The three active GHF sites distributed 17,280 boxes of aid on Thursday, the agency said. Each box is meant to provide three meals a deal, for roughly four days, for a family of roughly five people.
The total number of trucks unloaded at the three GHF sites today was just 18, though. The UN has said 600 trucks of aid need to be distributed each day in order to properly feed the Strip’s roughly two million people.
According to the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), 76 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Thursday. Since Israel resumed aid deliveries to Gaza on May 19, after a pause since March 2, 952 trucks in total of aid have entered the Strip.
Some of the truckloads have been taken to the new GHF-run aid distribution sites. The contents of many of the trucks are still awaiting collection on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing after being inspected by Israeli authorities.
עזתים מגיעים – וחוזרים עם חבילות – ממרכז חלוקת הסיוע במרכז הרצועה סמוך לציר נצרים שנפתח היום pic.twitter.com/27TgpN7ze3
— Nurit Yohanan (@nurityohanan) May 29, 2025
After denying that Palestinians at its sites have been shot at, a GHF spokesperson confirmed Thursday that American security contractors operating its Bureij distribution center fired smoke bombs and warning shots at a crowd that would not disperse. There were no injuries. Footage posted on social media of the incident showed dozens of civilians fleeing the scene as shots and stun grenades were apparently fired in their direction.
Overnight, the GHF denied reports of deaths, mass injuries and chaos at its aid distribution sites, saying that only two people have been injured at its compounds since it began operating in Gaza, “one relating to dehydration and another who was injured by others seeking aid.”
The GHF said Hamas and other parties are determined to see the US- and Israel-backed agency fail, and were spreading false reports in order to harm it. According to the GHF, one of those false reports said the agency had halted operations due to gunfire at one of its site on Wednesday.
جيش الاحتلال يطلق قنابل غاز على المواطنين خلال توجههم لاستلام مساعدات الشركة الأمريكية في نيتساريم وسط قطاع غزة pic.twitter.com/6uYDOm9x9n
— شبكة فلسطين للحوار (@paldf) May 29, 2025
While the GHF urged journalists to verify sources before publishing developments pertaining to it, the organization had on Tuesday issued a statement claiming that only a “small number” of Palestinians overran one of its aid sites when footage showed that thousands looted their sites.
Reviewing that incident in its latest statement, GHF avoided downplaying the scope of the overrun, saying it had been anticipated due to “acute hunger and Hamas-imposed blockades.”
Nurit Yohanan and Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.
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