UPDATE - 5 more Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza, bringing toll to 9 in one day

UPDATES WITH NEW DEATHS, REVISES HEADLINE, LEDE, ADDS CHANGES

By Anadolu staff

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - Five more Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip, taking the toll to nine in the last 24 hours, the military said on Tuesday.

The army said the five soldiers of the Combat Engineering Corps were killed by explosive devices in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

The new military deaths came shortly after the army said four soldiers were killed in battles in the central and southern Gaza Strip.

Six other troops were seriously wounded in the battles, the military said in a statement cited by the Times of Israel news website.

As many as 185 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the besieged enclave since Israel expanded its ground operation on Oct. 27. The military death toll since the onslaught on Gaza in October, however, has risen to 519.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, killing at least 23,210 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 59,167 others, according to local health authorities.

Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas offensive.

About 85% of Gazans have been displaced, while all of them are food insecure, according to the UN.

Hundreds of thousands of people are living without shelter, and ⁠less than half of aid trucks are entering the territory than before the start of the conflict.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara