Israeli commanding officer killed in Southern Gaza

Jerusalem, July 11 (IANS) The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Friday that a combat commanding officer was killed in an incident in the southern Gaza Strip.

The officer, Reei Biran, aged 21, was a squad commander in the IDF's Golani Reconnaissance Unit.

Israel's state-owned Kan TV reported that a Golani force operating in Khan Younis entered a building suspected of being a "terrorist infrastructure." While the soldiers were mining the building, an explosion occurred, killing the commander.

Later on Friday, the IDF said in a separate statement that its armoured forces, in coordination with the Israeli Air Force, eliminated an armed squad that approached them and posed a threat in the Khan Younis area, reported Xinhua news agency.

It added that the armoured forces dismantled "terrorist" infrastructure sites, both above and below ground, and confiscated weapons and military equipment.

On 6 July, Israel killed the head of Hamas' naval force in northern Gaza in an airstrike, the military and Shin Bet domestic security agency said.

The strike, carried out by an Israeli fighter jet in Gaza City on June 30, killed Ramzi Ramadan Abd Ali Saleh, described by the Israeli authorities as the commander of Hamas' naval force in the northern Gaza Strip. Two other Hamas militants were also killed in the attack, including Hisham Ayman Atiya Mansour, deputy head of the movement's mortar array unit, and Nissim Muhammad Suleiman Abu Sabha, an operative in the same unit.

Saleh was "a significant source of knowledge" for Hamas, the military and Shin Bet said, adding that he had recently been involved in planning maritime attacks against Israeli forces.

Since Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on March 18, at least 6,860 Palestinians have been killed and 24,220 others wounded, bringing the total Palestinian death toll since the war began in October 2023 to 57,418, with 136,261 others injured, according to figures released Sunday by Gaza health authorities.

--IANS

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