By Abdelsalam Fayez
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - Palestinian resistance group Hamas claimed Monday to have killed Israeli soldiers in a booby-trapped building explosion in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
The group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said its fighters blew up a building where Israeli soldiers had barricaded in the Shaboura refugee camp in Rafah.
Several Israeli soldiers were killed and injured in the blast, it added in a statement on its Telegram channel.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army on the claim.
On May 6, the Israeli army invaded Rafah, a tiny crowded city at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip despite international warnings. It also captured the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, a vital route to humanitarian aid into Gaza, worsening the already difficult humanitarian conditions in the territory.
Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.
More than 37,120 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 84,700 others injured, according to local health authorities.
Eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its military operation in Rafah.
*Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara