By Hosni Nadim
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – Hamas's military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said on Saturday that its fighters destroyed several Israeli military vehicles in the southern Gaza Strip.
According to a statement from the Al-Qassam Brigades, its fighters "managed to entrap a convoy of tanks into a tight ambush and destroy three Merkava tanks with Yassin 105 shells near the Abu Dhar Al-Ghafari Mosque east of Rafah, in southern Gaza Strip."
"Armed clashes are still ongoing,” it added.
Clashes between Palestinian armed factions and Israeli army forces are ongoing in Rafah, where the Israeli army launched a military offensive on May 6.
Earlier on Saturday, Israeli warplanes bombed the Al-Mawasi neighborhood of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Gaza Health Ministry reported that the bombing killed at least 71 Palestinians and injured 289 others.
Rescue operations are still underway as efforts to recover casualties from Al-Mawasi, an area crowded with displaced Palestinians who had moved there after the army designated it as a humanitarian zone.
Israeli media claimed that the attack was aimed at Mohammed Deif, Commander-in-Chief of the Al-Qassam Brigades, but neither Israeli authorities nor the Hamas military wing issued an official statement.
Israel, flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.
More than 38,300 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 88,300 injured, according to local health authorities.
Over nine months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie 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 it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
* Writing by Ikram Kouachi