8 Israeli Soldiers Killed In Southern Gaza Battles, Military Says

Eight Israeli soldiers were killed in battles in the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said Saturday.

In a brief statement, the Israeli army said that eight soldiers were killed in battles in the southern Gaza Strip, one of whom was Capt. Wasim Mahmoud, the deputy company commander in Battalion 601 of the Combat Engineers Brigade.

According to Israeli army data, the number of soldiers killed since the beginning of the war on Oct. 7 has risen to 658, including 306 in the ground battles that began on Oct. 27.

The data also indicates that 3,835 officers and soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including 1,936 in the ground battles.

The Israeli army did not provide details about the location of the soldiers' deaths in the southern Gaza Strip, but earlier on Saturday, Hamas's military wing al-Qassam Brigades stated in a statement that "at dawn on the Day of Arafah, our fighters executed a compound ambush against the invading enemy vehicles in the Saudi neighborhood in Tal al-Sultan, west of Rafah."

Nearly 37,300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli forces since October last year, most of them women and children, and almost 85,200 others injured, according to local health authorities.

More than eight months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

Writing by Rania Abu Shamala in Istanbul. -