The al-Zaytoun district of Gaza witnessed intense confrontations last night and into the early hours of this morning between Hamas gunmen and Israeli Defence Forces.
Reports indicate that Hamas militants employed light weapons and machine guns to target Israeli troops in the area, with the clashes escalating into close-quarters combat.
According to Israeli sources, one soldier was killed, eleven others sustained serious injuries, and four soldiers remain unaccounted for. Efforts to locate the missing personnel have so far proven unsuccessful. One Israeli serviceman reported hearing signals from the communications devices of the missing troops within the al-Zaytoun area.
Following the escalation, the Israeli military ordered an immediate withdrawal, redeploying its units from the district back to their bases. Simultaneously, the army’s military censorship division issued a directive prohibiting the publication of further details regarding the fate of the missing soldiers.
Hebrew-language media also reported that, in an effort to prevent the capture of its forces, the army invoked the “Hannibal Protocol” during the incident — a measure permitting the use of overwhelming firepower on a location, even at the risk of endangering its own personnel, to prevent them from being taken hostage.
Israeli sources described the encounter as a severe security incident and acknowledged that the army had faced one of the most difficult Hamas ambushes in Gaza since the outbreak of the war. The fate of the four missing soldiers remains unknown.
