Palestinian media says some 20 IDF commandos tried to enter Strip near Khan Younis, but forced to retreat; no confirmation or details on incident from IDF
Palestinian media reported that a force belonging to the Hamas military wing opened fire on an IDF special forces unit near the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis early Monday, forcing them to retreat.
The reports said there were no injuries or casualties on either side.
The reports said that an IDF force of some 20 soldiers entered the Strip and moved some 100 meters (yards) inside before Hamas gunmen opened fire on them with small arms fire.
There were no further details and no immediate confirmation or comment from the IDF.
The report came as Israel and Hamas, the terror group that rules the Strip and seeks to destroy the Jewish state, are trying to balance a fragile calmalong the border amidst sporadic flare-ups of violence.
Hamas has sometimes opened fire on Israeli engineering forces laying barbed wire on the Gaza side of the border.
In November, an Israeli special forces soldier was killed and another seriously wounded when their operation went awry inside Gaza. The IDF said at least 16 Palestinians were killed in the clashes and subsequent extraction of the Israelis.
The November 11 operation, details of which the Israeli military kept largely under gag order, turned deadly when the undercover soldiers were spotted near Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. The incident prompted Hamas to vow revenge and led to one of the deadliest escalation between the two sides since the 2014 war.
Hamas, an Islamist terror group, seized control of Gaza in a violent coup against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction in 2007, two years after Israeli evicted 7,000 Jews and dismantled Jewish settlements there, withdrew the army, and pulled back to the pre-1967 lines.
As reported by The Times of Israel