Three IDF soldiers were killed and at least three others were seriously wounded after Hamas fired ten rockets toward the Kerem Shalom area along the Israel-Gaza border on Sunday afternoon, halting the entry of humanitarian aid trucks through the crossing which serves as the main entry point for aid.
Hamas took responsibility for the rocket fire, saying their Al-Qassam Brigades targeted the Kerem Shalom area with 114 mm short-range “Rajoum” rockets.
The rockets were fired from only a couple hundred meters from the Rafah humanitarian crossing, one of the few areas where IDF soldiers still have not entered since the October 27 invasion of Gaza. The IDF said it had some generic intelligence warnings about intent to launch such attacks on IDF soldiers and that there was some kind of rocket alert warning in real-time.
The Jerusalem Post reported that in responding to the rocket attacks, the air force increased its attacks on Hamas command centers and other sites in Rafah, as well as against the locations of the rocket attacks themselves, which it appears came from underground attack platforms. Shortly after the attack, Palestinian media reported a series of Israeli airstrikes in the Rafah area.
“Hamas is intentionally preventing aid from reaching the people of Gaza,” wrote the Foreign Ministry on X, pointing to the rocket fire toward Kerem Shalom, disruptions of the movement of aid from southern to northern Gaza, and the firing of mortars at a corridor used for humanitarian purposes.
The three slain soldiers were identified as St.-Sgt. Ruben Marc Mordechai Assouline, 19, from Ra’anana; St.-Sgt. Ido Testa, 19, from Jerusalem; and St.-Sgt. Tal Shavit, 21, from Kfar Giladi. Assouline and Testa served in the Shaked Battalion in the Givati Brigade. Shavit served in the 931st Battalion in the Nahal Brigade. Soroka Medical Center stated that it received 10 people wounded in the attack, including three in serious condition, two in moderate condition, and five in light condition.
